


4.07: 15 Minutes

by Amand_r



Series: Torchwood, Season Four [9]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-04
Updated: 2011-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-16 02:32:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the new doctor settles into Torchwood, the team is reminded that all sorts of things come through the Rift, and they don't always get to them first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	4.07: 15 Minutes

_It's the place where my prediction from the sixties finally came true: "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, "In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous._

\---Andy Warhol's Exposures (1979) commenting on the nightclub "Studio 54", and his world famous quote.

 

"Did we get it?" Jack groaned, face-down on the cement.

Gwen glanced about and heaved herself into a sitting position. "Maybe. I think so."

Jack rolled over and flopped his arms out on the floor. "Good, because I can't chase anything." He tried to lift his head and failed. "Do I still have legs?"

Gwen blinked. "Yes."

"Score." He coughed and she could see him wince with the movement. "I don't think I'm going to be useful for a while."

Gwen nodded and scanned the wreckage in the warehouse for the artefacts they'd been looking for before they'd been confronted with that...thing. They were either long gone, or they'd never been here in the first place. She tugged her shirt over her head and replaced her coat before Jack could make a stripper joke. "I'll call in reinforcements."

Jack closed his eyes, smiling. "She's gonna love that."

It wasn't often that Gwen felt the need to do this, and it was going to kill something inside her to make the call. Or not. Who knew. Gwen figured that she shouldn't care. It wasn't her lying on the ground, bleeding into the cement. She probably would care less about having to admit to Dee that she and Jack needed help if it had been anyone other than Jack there.

No matter how bad it was, Jack would get better. He was already sitting up. The...thing was dead. Or dismantled. Or. Did living robots actually _live_?

"Hullo?"

"Are you terribly busy?" Gwen asked lightly as she tore her shirt into strips. Next to her, Jack yanked the shrapnel out of his leg and grunted, throwing the metal to the side. "Tourniquet," she mouthed to him.

Dee sounded irritable. "Little bit, do you need me right away?"

Gwen looked at Jack, who was holding a strip of her shirt in his hand and obviously trying to decide whether it was worth it or not to tie it off. Sometimes he was like that. If they had the time, and the wound was bad, he'd rather die and just wake up. Gwen wasn't fond of the routine, but sometimes it had its merits. She took the strip from his hands and tied his leg off herself. "Not precisely. It's just that Jack is down and I don't think he'll be fit for duty tonight."

Jack gave her the finger, but she could see relief in his face. After a wound like that, Gwen would most likely be in hospital, and she certainly wouldn't be in the mood for Rift monitoring even if she weren't. "I want drugs," he told her. "The good kind. The hallucinatory kind."

Dee laughed. "I can be there in an hour, are you sure you're all right?"

Gwen tied the rag into a double knot and wiped her hand on Jack's brow. He stuck his tongue out at her and tried to stand. Not so much with that, yet. "Oh we're fine. It's over here, but-" There was a clang on the other end and Dee swore. "What are you doing?"

Dee paused. And then. "I'm baking." Before Gwen could say anything, she barreled on. "I like to bake. I am making muffins. There's nothing wrong with making muffins." Her voice got louder the more agitated she made herself.

Gwen covered the bluetooth and mouthed, "She's baking muffins," to Jack, who barked a laugh and tilted his head back against the wall, eyes closed.

"-one of the womanly arts or something but it's a very Zen and -"

"Dee," Gwen said, "See you in an hour?"

Dee must have realised that she was on the defensive, because she stopped herself and there was a sigh. "They're just muffins."

Jack didn't open his eyes, but he raised his voice. "Are they pot muffins? I need some pot muffins."

Gwen ignored him. "That's fine. An hour then." She cut the call before Dee and Jack could get into it via her phone. "You have to stop baiting her."

Jack laughed and then winced when the motion jolted his leg. "What? If she has recreational drugs, I want some."

Gwen rose and squatted down, pulling one of Jack's arms up to mount over her shoulder. "All right, soldier. I bet Gretchen has some ketamine we can nick." He grunted and then half-shouted when she pulled him upright. He was as heavy as ever, but he was making a serious effort not to be, she could tell. They only had a half-block walk to the SUV. She'd have loved to have picked him up, but she couldn't get the car any closer.

"I like drugs, Gwen," Jack said. "For years, I wouldn't use them because I figured I would heal, blah blah the Doctor was coming back, I had to be ready." He waved a hand but it was to keep his balance. "But that was bullshit."

Gwen smiled in spite of herself. "I think you've lost a lot of blood, Jack."

Jack grunted and almost fell, and the impact of the jostle staggered them both. He bit back a scream. "Yeah, you know what will make that better?"

Gwen fished for her keys as they neared the vehicle. There they were, tangled with her bottle of weevil spray and three hair stays. "Not drugs."

Jack breathed heavily. "Bingo, drugs."

She opened the back seat and there was a second of indecision as she tried to get him to sit, but he just wanted to fall down, and then he sat, but they couldn't turn him, and she realised that the piece of shrapnel that he'd pulled out had only been the first of many. She crouched in front of him and forced him to lie back on the seats while she felt him up, pulling out more pieces of metal, some as long as her fingers, from various parts of his legs. His trousers were shredded.

"Oh, to the left," he moaned.

"Now's not the time to get frisky-oh." She stopped when she encountered another piece of metal and chastised herself for assuming he was being lascivious. "Why didn't you get all this out before we left?" she groused. "This couldn't have been good to walk on."

Jack rolled his head to the side so that he was staring into the front seat. "There's a certain level where the pain just shoots all over and you lose track," he admitted. "I was distracted by the giant hole near my femoral artery."

She would take him at his word on that. The ride back was uneventful, if one counted the fact that every bump they hit made her wince. Jack didn't move or make a sound. She thought he might have died and thought to leave him in the SUV until Dee got there and they could drag him to the med bay, but when she parked and turned off the engine, Jack groaned and opened an eye.

"I'm not dead."

"No," she said, wondering if she _should_ kill Jack, but knowing that she never would. Not for this. Despite what she knew. What if this was the one time it didn't work? There was always that nagging doubt.

"Oh man," Jack said, rolling to his feet from the seat as she helped. "I'm not gonna be dancing the jitterbug any time soon."

Gwen smirked. "Come on, soldier."

She had Jack settled in the med bay, a saline drip running and a mild dose of ketamine from the stores rammed into his leg when Dee arrived, immaculate as ever, not the insane rambling lunatic Gwen had imagined over the phone, hair askew, face dusted with flour. She set a small box on one of the counters of the med bay as she came nearer and shrugged off her jacket, tossing it over Gretchen's chair. "Oh Harkness, you are a mess."

Jack smiled at her. "I love when you're all stroppy."

Dee rolled her eyes and glanced at Gwen, still clad in just her bra and leather jacket. "I didn't know topless was an option," she said, eyebrow raised.

Gwen forgot that Dee had a sense of humor most of the time.

Jack hadn't. "Topless has _always_ been an option," he drawled, smile sliding across his face. "See look at me. Topless." He ran his free hand down his chest and it drooped. "My arm is very very heavy."

Gwen laughed. "He's going to metabolise that in about fifteen minutes. You can give him more or just let him go. He might be healed enough by then." She tossed Jack's cut-away trousers in the bin and looked at his y-fronts, still on, but bloody. She hadn't wanted to confront that, but they probably had to come off. If Jack was better in fifteen minutes, then maybe he could shower himself and change his own clothes.

"You're pawning him off on me," Dee said, yanking the chair over by the rollers so that she could sit on it. "That's okay."

Gwen shrugged. "You were next on the emergency tree anyway," she said. And that was true. They rotated the sub list out of fairness. Gwen had already been called in once, and Lois twice. Maggie was still waiting, but Gretchen had been the fill-in person for evenings for a long time, and they had taken advantage of that. Now that Gretchen was gone, they had more than one hole to fill.

"Figures that this would happen the night before the new medic is due to report," Dee said, as if she was reading Gwen's mind.

Jack grinned beatifically at Gwen and she was afraid of what was going to come out of his mouth, but instead he just said, "The night before Gwen started, we called her in."

Dee spread her hands. "Great, let's do that."

"Aaaaand then she threw a chisel and released a sex gas alien that killed a bunch of guys in a sperm clinic."

Dee made a face. "Let's not do that, then."

Gwen crossed her arms. "I thought you said I could live that down," she admonished.

Jack waved a finger, and then he became mesmerised with his finger as if it was glowing and his eyes followed it for a second. "You should never live down, Gwenalicious, you should always live _up_. Like me." He tapped his chest. "Riiiiiiiight. Heeeeeeeeere."

Gwen rolled her eyes. He did not just pretend to be E.T.

"I'll go get you some clothes, for when you're more...mobile."

Jack turned his head to Dee. "We should get that hovercraft and take it out for a spin."

Dee pulled the box from her counter and shook her head. "Yeah, that's not happening," she mumbled. Gwen could hear her distract Jack with machine talk as she left them there, Dee adding, "The stabilisers in the left rear are all fucked."

Gwen thought about the new medic while she crawled down into Jack's (now mauve) living space. One Daniel Schmidt, a medical doctor via UNIT, and before that a medical doctor trained via the German Bundeswehr JMS. Dee was okay with him, and Jack said that he'd follow orders. He was to be their man on the ground with UNIT, though it was to be made clear that he did not in fact answer to UNIT any longer.

Gwen didn't anticipate any issues there. He had to take oaths to the Queen and all that when he'd filled out her hiring paperwork, and she was fairly sure that he'd taken it seriously. Fairly.

Besides, as Jack had reminded her, if he didn't work out, she could always send him back.

When Gwen returned to the med bay with some of Jack's clean clothing, a vest and a pair of what she thought were pajama bottoms (it was hard to tell), Jack was more alert, sitting up and talking to Dee in hushed tones. She had no idea what they spoke about when they did this, maybe guns, maybe it was sexy, though she hadn't pegged either of them for intimacy. She'd been wrong before anyway.

Jack looked up at the sound of her shoes on the stairs and he smiled wearily. It took her a split second to realise that he was chewing. "Gwen," he said with a full mouth, and then forced himself to swallow. "Gwen, this is the best muffin I have ever had in my life." In his free hand he waved a stump of what had probably begun life as a muffin, but was now just the bitter end of a muffin.

"It's banana nut," Dee supplied.

"It's banana nut-awesome," Jack returned. "Gwen should hire you to be our official baker."

Gwen set his clothing on the table and checked his drip. Half the bag to go. She opened the IV wide to speed up the process. "We don't need an official baker," she told him.

Jack shoved the last of the muffin in his mouth and closed his eyes. "We so totally do," he said, spitting crumbs out over the sheet that covered his open wounds.

Dee shrugged at Gwen and held out the box. "Muffin?"

  


Robert Costa straightened his tie and stared in the bathroom mirror. This was not the end of his life. Just maybe his career. Not the life part. The career part. Maybe.

"Grace," he called out into the hallway. "If you need a ride then you have to be ready in five minutes-"

"I DON'T NEED A RIDE," Grace hollered over the volume of the music playing in her room.

Robert sighed and stared at his reflection in the mirror again. The tie was fine, the suit was fine. It was him that was off. He'd looked shell-shocked since Spence had left.

"I am just saying that if you aren't gone in the next five minutes you're going to need a ride," he shouted back. Their neighbours probably hated them, shouting at each other over the sounds of My Chemical Romance.

The music cut off abruptly and Robert left the bathroom as Grace thumped out of her room in her too-big boots and tight clothes that were practically the uniform of the emo teenager. He opened his mouth to say something, but her earbuds flashed white when she turned her head and he knew she'd just undocked the ipod and jacked herself in.

Robert wished again that Spencer were still here because he would know what to say. He had always been better at connecting with Grace, but of course now Spencer was busy connecting with the arse of his administrative assistant.

It didn't do to be bitter.

Grace clonked into the kitchen and he saw her little furry backpack, probably big enough to hold her ipod and no books, not that she did her homework these days. She opened one of the cupboards and rummaged about, probably snagging an Alpen bar. He was a doctor, he knew how important breakfast was. He should have made her eat breakfast proper. Spencer would have made her porridge.

Spencer was probably making someone else porridge.

The front door slammed while he was folding his suit jacket over his arm and checking his tie for stains. That was one thing taken care of. Now it was time to go and face the other firing squad. At least after today he'd only have to deal with the home edition.

It took him three times to get out of the house, mostly because he kept remembering things he'd forgotten, and then finally, he'd stood outside the front door, staring at the lock until he realised that his keys were still on the counter. His briefcase felt too light, mostly because there was nothing in it. He hadn't been able to take casework home since the suspension, and when he'd returned to duty they hadn't burdened him with anything worth paperwork-sutures and drug seekers and kids with beads up their noses. Fun in the A&E.

The car smelled funky and he wondered if he'd left something in here to rot. The backseat was a mass of wadded paper bags and old styro coffee cups. He would offer Grace money to clean it, later. She always needed cash for her...things.

He stared at himself in the rearview mirror. "Come on Robert, there are plenty of fish in the sea." And jobs. And husbands. "You've always wanted to be a fisherman, right? Now's your chance."

Jesus, what a fucking lie.

  


* * *

Daniel Schmidt was tall. That was almost an understatement. Lois took a moment to think, as she watched him enter the Hub and look around, blinking his blue eyes, that every German she'd ever met was tall. What was that about? Something in the water? Remnants of the Master Race? Lifts? Did they all wear lifts?

She peered at Daniel's shoes. Looked okay to her.

"Hello!" she said warmly and a little too loudly. Daniel blinked at her and didn't return what she liked to call her award-winning smile. "Good morning and welcome to Torchwood!"

Gwen must have heard the access doors, because she came bounding down the stairs. Daniel accepted Lois's hand and shook it vigorously, then blinked his giant Nordic eyes at Gwen. God, throw in Jack and Maggie, and you had the blue-eyed triplets. Lois was starting to feel outnumbered. Wait, she did anyway.

"Dr Schmidt! Welcome! We've been so excited to bring you on board!"

The doctor shrugged his heavy-looking satchel and gave Gwen a weak smile. "I am excitedly to work at Torchwood," he said.

Lois could feel her face scrunch up at the words. Was he a robot? Would they be able to tell?

Gwen smiled. "Yes," she said, her voice a little louder with the misplaced idea that raising the volume broke down all language barriers. "Well, I see you've met Lois." She let go of Daniel's hand and gestured towards the med lab. "We'll get you settled in your lab and then do introductions in the morning meeting, once everyone is here."

Everyone being Dee, who had a late arrival time, since she'd pulled guard duty last night. Lois didn't quite know what had happened, but she figured she'd find out in the morning meeting. All she knew was that she was happy it hadn't been her.

Daniel and Gwen ambled off in the direction of the lab. Gwen was already doing her 'These are the house rules' speech, and Lois didn't bother to listen because she'd written half of it ("You should never touch anything pulsing; if you feel the need to lick something, you probably shouldn't. Maggie's office occasionally explodes. Do not point the Twiglets at Dee. Jack might grab your arse," etc.). Instead, she finished filing the stack of folders in her hands, tossed Sam and Dean a few scrabble tiles (all wood, all natural, they could read them and then eat them), and wondered about whether or not it would be a bad thing to have a robot doctor. Hadn't worked well for Voyager, Maggie had said, but nothing worked well for Voyager.

Lois almost hit herself in the face with her palm.

But not right now. She'd contemplate her slow descent into geek hell later, right now she had other fish to fry. Lois sat at her desk and opened the box, smiling as she lowered her head to smell.

Banana nut.

  


* * *

"When I received the lab results," Robert said, twisting his fingers, "I already had the Kaplan case open in front of me."

Dr Bianchi glanced at the papers in front of him. The NHS litigator next to him, a pinched-face woman, folded her hands, almost setting her head on them. "Kaplan being your fifty-year-old patient with renal insufficiency?"

Robert had been through this with his lawyer, with the hospital lawyers, with his department head, with himself, and there was nothing left but to tell the story as it happened. "Yes," he answered.

"And you saw these lab reports for Malcolm Jones, aged eight, and you were not thinking about them as you read them?" Bianchi raised an eyebrow.

Robert closed his eyes. "I was, but I was tired and I'd been working for so long." He spread his hands on the table. "I told the nurse to give Malcolm Jones thirty grams of Kayexalate because I had been thinking of the Kaplan case on the desk." He paused. "And that was the mistake. I had too many things going on."

There was a long silence where Robert wondered if he was supposed to be saying something. Was he supposed to be apologising? He had apologised, and he had admitted his mistake, and he had explained what had happened. There wasn't anything else he could do. Nothing would reverse what had happened.

To this day, he still couldn't understand how he'd made the mistake. Spence had just left him and Grace hadn't been doing well. He'd been tired and pulling extra shifts to get ahead in the mortgage that he now had to pay himself (but probably wouldn't be paying for much longer). The two cases had been identical, almost, except the patients had been...different, of course. One dosage that was fine in an adult could kill a child. Almost killed a child.

The worst part was that just before it had happened, Robert had been drinking coffee and rubbing his head, looking at the files, and thinking, "I have to narrow these down, because I might confuse them."

He'd never said that to anyone aloud. There were some shovels you didn't pick up to dig your own grave.

"Malcolm's parents, Deborah and Tristam Jones, have filed with NHS and obtained a lawyer," Bianchi said, glancing at the NHS litigator. "You understand that what the board decides today pertains to your employment here and not the outcome of the litigation."

He sighed. "Yes."

"And also the retention under review is your license to practise medicine," Bianchi added.

That had been the stab to the gut, but not unexpected at all. Robert glanced at his lawyer. "Yes, I am aware."

"Then the board will deliberate and inform you of our decision today." Bianchi shuffled some papers and smoothed them out in front of him, as if he was unsure what to do with his hands. Robert wondered if he was nervous. Robert was nervous, but that was because he was about to be sacked. And possibly forever stripped of his meal ticket.

At that moment something hit the window and they all jumped. They were about four storeys up, and Robert caught the flash of feathers before the thing fell out of view. A bird. How often did that happen? If ever there was a bad omen, a bird crashing into a window and probably dying at the end of one's medical hearing was probably up there.

There was a nervous chuckle and some murmurs of ' _That_ was odd' before Bianchi flipped his folder closed and stood, the litigator mirroring him. The rest of the doctors on the evaluation board followed suit, and after a few cute nods, the room was empty of everyone but Robert and his solicitor, a tall, thin bearded man named Cameron Pope. Even he was beginning to stand.

"Look," he said to Robert, running a hand through his hair, eyes darting about. Robert wondered how much money he was losing by him just standing here, on the clock. "Everyone makes mistakes. Even you. You're not God." And then he picked up his briefcase. "I'll be outside." He pulled his mobile from his pocket. "I have to make calls."

Robert watched him slip out the door sideways, pulling it shut behind him. He thought about calling someone, anyone, Spencer, Grace, maybe, but she was in school, and she didn't want to hear from her less favorite dad now. So he sat at the table and made water rings on the wood with his glass, and thought about how they'd be around this place longer than he would.

Yeah, everyone made mistakes, he thought. But they were things like an off number in their checkbook or putting too much soap in the washer. This was unforgivable. So very unforgivable.

  


* * *

Maggie zeroed in on her target, her fingers spiderwalking across the table. Lois saw her and shook her head, eyes narrowed in consternation. Crap, she'd been spotted. Her hand slid away from the plate of pastries and back into her lap.

It wasn't fair. Lois was playing her "THOSE ARE FOR COMPANY" game with the pastries, and Dr Schmidt wasn't even going to eat one. He sat at the table with his hands wrapped around a mug of tea and listened to Jack and Gwen lay out some of the finer points of Torchwood.

They had decided that these were the kind of things they would all do together-orientation, as it was. Dee had already given her speech about "Firepower: What we use to kill, stun and incapacitate, and what will kill, stun and incapacitate you at all speed." Lois had done her, "If you don't fill in your timecards, QE2 will not pay your arse" speech, and Jack had done the "Just because it smells good doesn't mean you should lick or hump it" speech.

Gwen was in the middle of rotas and report pecking order when Maggie tried again for a pastry. Lois's eyes were little daggers that spit fire from the depths of her hellish soul; Maggie fumed, pulling her hand back into her lap. Gwen had finished with rotas and they all turned their pages to the next section: what counted as a 'sick day' (human infection or illness, extra limbs, loss of limbs, otherwise altered physical state, changes in perception that affected performance re: thinking one is a hummingbird, etc.). Jack's hand snaked into her lap from his place on her left and she froze.

Jack continued to watch Gwen with the interest of a person who was dying to find out how many grievance days they had and whether or not they qualified if the deceased was not from this planet (it depended). But his hand dropped something on her skirt, and then his fingertips brushed her thigh as his hand withdrew, because let's face it, that was as close as he was going to get, as far as Mags was concerned. He brought his hand up and made a steeple of his fingers, hanging on Gwen's every word.

Maggie glanced down at the pastry in her lap. Bless Captain Harkness. Wait, had he licked this?

"Are you ready?" Gwen said, and Maggie realised they were all staring at her.

"Oh," she said, "uh, yeah." Maggie brought the pastry to the table and Lois narrowed her eyes and counted the pastries on the tray. Finding none missing she was forced to capitulate. But her face said, 'Touché, Hopley.'

"The tech issue," she began, making eye contact with Dr Schmidt, who had not yet said, 'Call me Daniel,' or 'Call me Dan.' It was odd to say the least. "As a member of UNIT you probably have some experience with extra-terrestrial tech, and you and I will be spending a few days going over the equipment in your lab, actually, but there are a few things about new-tech handling protocol about which we should _all_ \--" Here she paused for effect and made eye contact with the whole group in turn. "Be mindful," she finished.

At that minute the Rift monitor went off. "Ah," Gwen said, rising and slapping her hand on the table. "Action at last."

"That's my line," Jack jibed.

Maggie left her binder on the table and shoved half the pastry in her mouth on the way to her lab for equipment. Lois snagged one of the pastries from the tray and Maggie made eyes at her. Dr Schmidt simply joined Dee in the armoury. Jack checked the monitors and Maggie listened with half an ear as she walked away.

"Oh! Yes! That infected Marmite has finally surfaced!" He grinned. "This is going to be awesome!"

Maggie rolled her eyes; she had hoped the mutated yeast spread would stay hidden in the sewers forever. Alas. "I'll get the Macs."

"I'll get the breadsticks," Lois said from her desk.

  


* * *

It was odd, cleaning out something you'd called home for five years. Robert's locker had been assigned to him the day he'd arrived at Rookwood Hospital, and though the occupants of the lockers on either side had changed over the years, he'd held some measure of comfort in the fact that he'd been here so long.

So much for that.

He wondered what he was going to say to Grace. She'd expressed, multiple times in the past three months, a preference to go live with Spencer, but Spencer was having none of that. 'You adopted her,' he'd said. 'I'm too busy. I'll cut a cheque.' It was a marvel, the personality change Spencer had undergone in the past year. Sometimes Robert wondered if he had a brain tumour. He fantasized about it sometimes, running the MRI that unearthed the tumor and helped him save Spencer's life; and then Spence'd fall back into his arms, which was how he knew that he was veering into scary psycho land. Spencer was gone. It was time to move on.

Well, he thought as he peeled his nameplate from the front of his locker and stuffed it into his gym bag, everything was moving on now.

"I'll miss you," Bren said as she sat on the wooden bench in between the rows of lockers. "What are you going to do?"

He shrugged. "Don't have a job." He glanced at her. "Write my memoirs? I'll call it, 'Do As I Say, Not As I Do'."

Bren grimaced and tugged at the forceps clinched to the pocket of her scrubs. "Look, we all make mistakes-"

Robert snorted. "If one more person tells me that, I'll stab something."

There was a short chiming on the loudspeaker that indicated a forthcoming message, and then, "Mrs. Churchill, please report to the information desk."

Robert zipped up his bag and smiled. "That's one thing I won't miss," he said as Bren slapped her face with her hand. Katy had escaped again.

Katy Callahan, heiress to an old Cardiff chemist and pharmacy chain, had a whole wing dedicated to her care, built by her parents. Not that she needed it all, so sometimes they were allowed to put extra patients in the outlying rooms, and there was an understanding that when Katy no longer needed the wing, the hospital would be gifted it for whatever use they deemed fit. But for now, she had her own doctors, nurses, a butler in a uniform and private chefs.

There wasn't really anything wrong with Katy aside from the fact that she was addled and had a small heart defect. Addled in the harmless-kitten way, Katy liked to dress up in her nice clothes, slip her handlers, and escape, hailing a taxi and going down to the shops, where she would buy massive piles of hats. Her favorite stores all had her picture and called the hospital when she showed.

Sometimes, though, she just jaunted outside and they found her on the lawn, picking grass, or in the flowerbed, ripping up the carefully tended daffodils and tulips.

The message over the loudspeaker meant that anyone available was supposed to have a shufti, looking for Katy. No one wanted to have to call the Callahans and tell them their precious nutter girl had given them the slip. Bren stood and sighed. "Oh come on, you were good at finding her."

It was true. Robert had an uncanny sense of knowing where Katy would surface, from the cafeteria wearing a paper crown or the children's ward, hands full of custard cups. Sometimes he caught her at the security house out by the gate. Once he'd been on his way to his car and been able to block the taxi as it had been pulling out of the hospital circle.

But he wasn't a hospital employee anymore, and the last thing he needed was the legal ire of the Callahans descending on him like the final...something or other. What was that game he used to play with Grace, where they built the tower of wooden blocks and then pulled ones from the bottom to put on the top without toppling it? Joonga? Zumba? Roomba? No, that wasn't it.

Instead, he hefted his bag over his shoulder and shut his locker, turning for the door. "Not my responsibility anymore," he called over his shoulder. He wouldn't miss hunting for Katy all over the hospital. "Check the atrium. She likes to pick flowers."

"It's March," Bren grumbled. "Ain't no flowers out there."

Robert shrugged. Katy wasn't a paragon of sanity, so.

He waved goodbye to Bren and made tentative and spectral plans in the form of, 'Ring me and we'll do dinner next week', and then he was out the door, heading for the car park. He highly doubted he'd ever see Bren again, but one never knew. At this point, he was shocked that Grace kept coming home every evening, though she'd already stated her living preference. The irony of that made Robert want to stab something.

He was halfway across the car park to the employee parking when he heard a thin soprano off in the higher greenery that rimmed the division between visitor and employee parking. Robert sighed and veered off in that direction. Even when he wasn't trying, he managed to find her. It had to be a sign. He should present his CV to the Callahan family to be Katy's personal handler.

Katy sang under her breath, her hospital gown ruffling about her calves. Her bathrobe belt hung from one loop and dragged in the grass behind her. Robert glanced about-no one around. He pulled his shoulder strap over his head so that he freed his hands, and walked towards the girl.

"Katy," he said in a mild voice, "It's cold out here."

Katy shrugged but didn't look at him. "Gonna be a star." She held up the long box in her hand as the buttons on it blinked red and blue.

Robert squinted at the device. Whatever it was, it surely didn't belong to her. "Katy, I don't know where you got that, but you really should-"

His hand pulled the box on the other end, and Katy yanked on hers. There was a clicking noise and then the thing snapped in two. Katy waved her half of the box.

"Showtime!"

And then there was a blinding flash, and Robert heard a few chords of what sounded like the Sex Pistol's 'God Save The Queen', and then he passed out.

  


* * *

Dee found Lois sitting at her desk, hunched behind a stack of paperwork that she had obviously arranged so that it would conceal herself. She chewed on the end of a pencil and watched the new doctor poke at the Ianto Jones coffee memorial, his face set in some sort of sceptical frown. Was he thinking of trying to make coffee with it?

Perhaps they did need a rite of passage for new people. Was this hazing?

"So, I don't think we're in danger of losing you to MI-6, Double Oh Loser," she said to Lois, pushing the stack of papers away and raising an eyebrow. Lois sat back and pulled her pencil from her mouth, eyed the teeth marks, and then tossed it in the bin under her desk.

"I'm perplexed."

Dee crossed her arms and stared at the moving form of Myfanwy in the treetops of the eyrie. Gretchen used to feed her, and Jack had started doing it, but Dee thought maybe they needed a rota. Maybe Schmidt would start doing it and they'd all be free of extra responsibility. It occurred to her that they'd hired a "man" (Jack) under the pretense of having him do all the shit jobs, and yet she'd just changed the oil on Twoo. Something was wrong there.

"So you have decided to stalk our new co-worker," she said slowly. "Badly, I might add."

"Daniel Schmidt has the personality of a cheese grater," Lois mumbled.

Dee shrugged. "That's hardly fair."

"He called Dean and Sam overgrown disease peddlers and wants to move them to the greenhouse."

Dee narrowed her eyes as she watched the tall man pick up something from the fridge, sniff it, and make a face. "Clearly he's a moron, but we shouldn't hold that against him."

"Who's gonna hold what against me?" Jack asked, sitting down on the end of Lois's desk a few feet from Dee. "Please remember that I like natural fabrics only. Those man-made poly-blends give me hives."

Lois hit Jack in the leg. "We're talking about Dr Schmidt."

Jack followed their line of sight to the kitchenette and the doctor. "This morning I made a perfectly good sexual innuendo about a chipolata, and he didn't even glare at me. Just blinked." Jack paused. "Is English his first language?"

Dee rolled her eyes. "Even if it wasn't, you'd have to be an idiot to not have understood the crassness that was your chipolata reference this morning." She glanced at Lois. "It was enough to make me want to bat for the other team."

Lois raised an eyebrow. "Well, well, a girl can dream."

Jack sighed and shoved off the desk. "Hey, we have things to do don't we?"

Lois started. "Oh! I've a message for you!" She dug about in the small stack of pink pieces of paper that she was obviously hoarding for some reason. "It came for you last night on the operator line. Ah here--" She handed him a paper. "A Dr Gower called from Rookwood Hospital, something about Mrs. Churchhill catching the late train?"

Jack stared at the paper. "Oh, god, not her." He glanced up at Cooper's office. "Is she in?"

Lois waved a hand and Dee jumped off the edge of the desk and followed him to the stairs. "Is it something dire?"

Jack snorted. "Something irritating, more like."

"Isn't that like the pot and the kettle?"

Jack turned around to face her as he backed into Cooper's office. His fingers came together to make a W. "Whatever."

Dee could feel her face smile, and she didn't want to. Damn Jack. And when had she started calling him Jack? That thought wiped the smile from her face as she followed him into Cooper's office and leant against the wall by the door.

Jack flopped down in the chair in front of Cooper's desk and slouched. Cooper looked at him over the rims of her reading glasses, things that lived in her desk drawer and which she never took from the room, as if they were a dirty secret. At least she'd stopped hiding them whenever someone walked by.

"Oh-kay," Cooper said slowly, "hullo everyone."

Jack waved a hand. "We have a situation."

Cooper sat back and pulled off her glasses, folding the stems and setting them on the stack of papers on her left. Her lips twitched. "Oh do we now?"

Dee watched Jack's demeanour change minutely as he began to assert himself. Dee enjoyed watching the Jack and Cooper dog and pony show, in which Jack tried not to take charge and Cooper seemed to bait him by waiting for information, like it was some sort of test. What Dee suspected was that sometimes Cooper forgot she was in charge.

"So, remember Flat Holm?"

Cooper rolled her eyes. "Remember? Who do you think pays for that?"

Jack put his feet on her desk, a blatant display of childishness, and Cooper let him. "Yeah see, uhm, not all of the people who should be there...are there."

He waited, almost baiting Cooper for a change. Dee broke the silence for them both. "Why?"

Jack shook his head, waving a finger. "Because mummy and daddy have money." He smiled. "You know all about that, right?"

Dee mirrored his head shake, resisting the urge to flip him off. Instead she lifted her hands and made the letter with her thumbs and forefingers. "Whatever."

  


* * *

Robert didn't remember getting into his car and driving home, but here he was, in front of the house, engine off, staring at the arse of Mrs. MacLelland's dented Vauxhall. How long he had been here was up for debate, too. The heating vents were cold, and the engine wasn't ticking from the cool-down anymore. The auto lights were off in the morning sun, and when he finally turned his head he saw a dark shadow in the kitchen window of the house.

For a second he thought that perhaps Spence was back. It was a stupid thought, but still as soon as he thought of it, a whole fantasy sprang from his mind—Spence was worried about him. Grace had called him, and he'd rushed over. The two of them had sat up, worried. When Robert walked through the door, they would all fall together, and things would knit together like they had been before.

The shadow moved and Monstro, Grace's cat, jumped up into the windowsill. Spence had trained him to stay off the furniture and windowsills, but in his absence the cat had declared a field day on all the forbidden places.

Robert blinked and sighed.

He did a lap around the car, looking for scratches or scrapes or dents, signs that he might have hit something or someone on his way home. The last thing he needed was to have some sort of driving under the influence charge. Perhaps after a cup of tea and a shower he'd feel ready to think harder about last night.

And the want ads.

He had his keys, thank god, though how he would have got home without them might have been cause for concern. The front door was locked, so even if Spence wasn't here, Grace had the wisdom to keep herself safe.

The kitchen was empty. Robert leant in the doorway and watched the dust motes dance in the shaft of sunlight that hit the center of the table and contemplated how he used to come back from night shafts to find two of those chairs occupied, box of cereal on the table, his tea warm under the hideous chicken-shaped tea cozy Grace had made them in day care.

As it was, now, there was a pile of cat sick on Spence's chair. Robert left it and sat on his own chair. His head was pounding. His fingers tingled, as if they'd been asleep for ages and the pins and needles had just worn off.

"They sacked you, didn't they?" Grace said suddenly, coming out of the hallway and sitting across from him at the kitchen table. Robert took in her sculpted black hair, her painted nails, her dark lips, the hooded eyes, the little headband with skulls on it, and wondered if his little girl was still in there. Probably. Like an espresso-covered chocolate bean.

That didn't sound right, even to his inner brain.

"Aren't you supposed to be at school?" He checked the kettle. It was empty.

Grace plopped down into her chair and sipped from her tea. "Aren't you supposed to come home at night?"

Robert opened his mouth to say something, and instead rubbed his temples with his fingers. The tea cosy laid on its side on the table like a dead chicken. "No, you're right," he said finally. "I don't know what—"

"I rang Dad," Grace said, pouring the last of her tea down her throat, "and he says I can come by tonight."

Well then.

"How did he sound?" Robert heard himself asking before he could edit his text. Jesus.

"Happy." She narrowed her eyes and stood, gathering her bag. "We're going for Chinese. I may not be back tonight. Or ever."

Robert set his hands on the table and watched her go. If Spence wanted her, maybe she would be better off. Her little furry pom-pom purse was the last thing he saw before Grace slammed the door and he was left in the weak morning light, as pale and ineffective as poorly steeped tea.

  


* * *

"If she was a Rift victim, why isn't she at Flat Holm again?" Gwen asked as she and Jack and Dr. Schmidt left the office of Dr. Gower, the Rookwood Hospital administrator. The meeting had been uninformative, but it had given them free rein of all the authorised personnel areas only.

"Ix-nay on the at-flay olm-hay," Jack said, smiling at one of the male nurses. "Elloooooow-hay urse-nay."

Gwen rolled her eyes and examined the back a few steps in front of her. Dr Schmidt walked ahead of them. He'd done a stint at Rookwood, and so he knew where he was going, and he didn't seem to care about the particulars of the case (if this was a case) beyond the medical aspects. Gwen figured that was a good thing, because she didn't want to have to tell him about Flat Holm, not yet. On the other hand, they weren't bothering to lower their voices. Talking around Schmidt was like talking around bodyguards or people who didn't speak the language. Or at least it felt that way.

Gwen hoped this wouldn't backfire on them.

They entered the surveillance room and waited for the guard to key up the necessary tape. She smiled and waved a hand. "I think we can take it from here," she said, laying a hand on the man's shoulder. He shrugged and left the room.

"Subject C left through a back exit, and then rounded the front of the building to the yard by employee parking," Dr Schmidt said, turning the dial on the console and fast forwarding the tape. "And then she encountered an object on the lawn, where she was stopped by this man."

They watched the altercation, if one could call it that, in silence. The young man looked to be in his thirties, dusky, with short black hair. He carried a duffel bag and wore a light jacket. He approached the girl as she stared at the long thin blinking box (why did everything that came through the Rift blink? That was _never_ a good sign), and he said something to her. She replied, and then when they both pulled on the end of the box they held, it snapped in half, as if it was made of balsa. There was a flash, and both parties fell backwards. The halves of the box blew off into the grass.

"We might still be able to find the thing," Jack murmured to her as they watched the immobile figures on the screen. "I should have put a tracer inside that girl."

"I repeat," Gwen said as they watched the girl shake herself awake, scramble to her feet, and then head for the exit. "If she was a Rift victim, why is she not at Flat Holm?"

Jack shrugged. "She's a member of one of Cardiff's wealthiest families," he answered distractedly. "They got to her before we did. Besides," he added, waving a hand, "her condition is benign. She lived in a hospital wing dedicated to her."

"This doesn't look benign to me," Dr Schmidt said, and they watched Katy Callahan approach the security guard at the checkhouse, then pick him up and toss all twelve stone of him like a stuffed toy.

"She's under a lot of pressure, maybe?" Jack asked Dr Schmidt, who just shrugged and stared at the screen.

Katy looked at the CCTV camera then, right at them, and Gwen shuddered for a second before the girl's eyes glowed in the black and white and there was a flash and then the feed went dead.

"Oh dear," Gwen heard herself murmur.

"Okay yeah," Jack agreed, hands in pockets, "that's new."

  


* * *

"So, I'm going to live with Spence," Grace said. "I'm going to see him tonight, and he has a spare room in his new place, you know where they rebuilt those Skypoint things?"

Cora unscrewed her bottle of water and sat down on the top of her stepladder, staring at the paint-covered box in front of her with glazed eyes. "Mmm-hmmm."

"We're getting Chinese from Oriental Garden," she added. Just the thought of it warmed her stomach. She had a whole speech planned out, though she wasn't sure she would need it. A long list of Robert's issues in the past two months would pretty much ensure that Dad would let her live with him and Ioan.

"I don't think this is the right shade," Cora said under her breath and jumped down from the ladder and rummaged about in the open cans of paint.

"So, what is this supposed to be anyway?" Grace asked as she added another three brush-widths of paint to the plywood box.

Cora poured more blue paint into her pan and slapped her roller into it. "Installation art for Huw," she said.

Grace wiped her nose and then blinked at her paint-smeared hand. "This shite smells."

"It's paint."

"Yeah, I get that." She dumped the brush in the nearest paint bucket and reached for the rag on the ladder next to her. "Is he making some sort of statement about the police?"

Cora blinked and stepped back from the box in front of her. "Not precisely." She glanced at Grace. "It's about aliens."

"Immigrants?"

"Naw, _aliens_. From _space_."

"Your man's a little bit of a nutter," Grace said, shouldering her bag and throwing the rag at Cora. "I gotta go. Vandy's waiting for me at Subway."

Cora looked from Grace to the painted box and the three unpainted ones further down the warehouse. "Hrm. If he has anything good, get me enough for a spliff?"

Grace raised two fingers above her head as she yanked the sliding door open and slid out of the warehouse. The morning air was warming up. It was closer to noon, and after she met up with Vandy she was going to smoke out and write a little, then meet dad at seven. She'd stashed a bag in the bushes in front of the house, so she wouldn't even have to go in when she swung by on her way to the restaurant.

She was thinking about what she'd paint her room at Dad's, and so she didn't see the girl until they ran smack dab into each other and staggered backwards. The girl blinked as if startled, then stared at Grace's hair. "I like your hat," she said.

Grace stared at the girl's worn terrycloth robe and stringy blonde hair. She looked familiar. "Uh, I use a straightener." She said absently. The girl's hands were filthy, as if she'd been scrabbling around in the dirt. Over her shoulder, Grace could see some sort of makeshift tent on the edge of the park behind the girl. Was she living in there?

"I'm gonna be a star," The girl mumbled, then turned and walked back into the park.

Grace zipped her coat up a little bit more and watched the girl go, her hospital gown fluttering under her robe. She should report her, but why? Robert was always doing things for her because he was the one who 'knew better', and look how that had worked out.

She glanced at her watch. She was late for Vandy. Fuck.

  


* * *

A shower made him feel moderately better, but Robert still found that he couldn't remember the events of the night before. He remembered leaving hospital, everything in his duffel, and then…had he met someone? Had he been hit by a car? Had he gone out and got pissed? He didn't feel like it, and besides, he'd left his club days behind him when they'd adopted Gracie.

There was a message for Grace on the machine in the hallway, Spence in a quiet voice telling her he'd meet her at Oriental Garden this evening. Robert wondered why he didn't call her mobile, and figured that Spence didn't want to talk on the phone. If he was a more paranoid man, Robert might have suspected that Spence left the message to rub his absence into Robert's skin, but he wasn't like that. It would never occur to him, not because he was too considerate, but because he simply didn't care enough.

It had been months. Robert stared at the shiny out-of-date club shirts in the back of his closet—dear god, would he have to go out to get a new husband? How did a man in his thirties with a daughter attract a mate? Obviously Spencer had gotten his from the steno pool. Robert didn't even have a job.

The search for shoes revealed that sometime in the past few days, the cat had vomited on his surgical clogs, bright green rubber monstrosities that Gracie and Spence had decorated for him. Lovely.

"Right, then," Robert told the door jamb, "there's no such things as omens. Dead birds, cat sick, ansaphone messages, it's not about you." He lifted his electrical razor and stared at himself in the mirror. "The universe is not trying to tell you something."

When he turned on the razor, there was a burning smell, and a few snapping noises, and then the handle got hot, and Robert dropped it into the empty sink. The plastic that had been under his skin was soft and dented in. He was lucky he hadn't been electrocuted.

"No," he mumbled, "not trying to tell you anything at all."

Despite his mysterious night, he had things to do. He was jobless, so he should probably read the papers. No medical place was going to hire him with this hanging over his head, so a change of career might be in order. At least until the litigation ended. He had malpractice insurance, and it would pay out a bit towards his legal fees, but he still had a mortgage and child to support, groceries to buy, a car that required a never ending stream of petrol.

Worse came to worse, he could move up to Ruthin and take the farm from mum. Grace might like the sheep and—

"Let's not think about that," he told himself, shrugging on his coat. The tea cosy still sat on the table, a deflated thing, its chicken shape another omen of work to come. If he took over the farm, the first thing to go would be the chickens.

His mobile was dead, but he pocketed it anyway. Once outside, Robert flipped up his collar and considered walking. It wasn't that far to the bank, and he had a few shopping bags tucked into his pocket. The walk in the wind might do him some good.

In fact, the two-kilometer walk was refreshing, actually, the bite of the March air chafed his face and permeated his skull, and everything became clearer. He might have even had a bit of a spring in his step by the time he opened the door to the bank, pulling his hands from his warm pockets and fumbling for his wallet.

The bank wasn't very busy at all, just a few customers, mostly at the back desks, so Robert strolled up to the counter and flipped out his Maestro card and slid it across the shiny wood towards the teller.

"Hullo Carolyn," he murmured. "Just checking on some things, and looking about opening a separate account for Gracie…" He trailed off when he caught sight of Carolyn's face. Her body was stiff, her hands flat on the counter surface, and her eyes, as wide as he'd ever seen them, darted from his face to something behind him. Her mouth twitched as if she wanted to say something to him, but she didn't make a sound.

Robert set his billfold on the counter in front of him. "Are you all right?"

Carolyn smiled weakly and scrunched a little, her neck seeming to tuck in to her shoulders. Her long earrings brushed her shoulders, and even from across the counter, he could see them shaking, a reflection of how frightened she was.

There was a little tap on the side of his head, and he started. Something solid pressed into the hollow behind his ear.

"Down on the floor," a man said. "Down on the floor and shut the fuck up."

Robert's brain was cold-starting as he slid to the floor, hands up. Once he was there, he realised that everyone behind him at the desks was sitting quietly, hands on the flat surfaces, eyes like saucers. How had he missed this?

And then he got a good look at who'd told him to lie down. Mister Ski Mask dragged one of the other tellers about with him. His arm around her neck in a lock, his gun moving from gesturing about the room to back to her head, and Robert paused to wonder where the hell he'd got a handgun in the UK. That bullshite was for the States.

"Where's my money, Scab?" the man shouted, waving the gun. Robert watched all the other people cringe when the barrel pointed in their direction.

Around the counter, someone else shouted, "He's takin' his sweet fuckin' time!"

"Well, speed him up!" the man screamed back, and then let lose a round into the ceiling. Several of the women in the back by the desks screamed, and Robert bit his tongue. He'd never been in the same room with a firing gun before, and it was loud. The woman in the man's grip slackened, her eyes rolled up into her head, and she became dead weight in the crook of his arm. The man dropped her on the floor and looked about, probably for a new human shield. His eyes alit on Robert.

Jesus, if he died, Gracie—

Oh come on, there was no sign that the man was even remotely going to shoot anyone.

Robert raised his hands up to his shoulders to show that they were empty and got to his knees. The next closest potential hostage was some old lady with a cane, and this wouldn't be good for her, even if she got out of it alive.

The man stared at him for a second, thinking about it. Robert shrugged minutely. He was putting himself up there. It was the least he could do. Plus if he died, then Gracie would be covered for Uni.

Finally the man gestured with the gun. "Right, up then." Robert staggered to standing, and the man gripped the hair on the back of his head, yanking. "Try anything, and I'll make your earholes bigger."

Robert thought about that in a detached manner as he bent backwards a bit to accommodate the gunman's shorter stature.

"It's fucking empty!" the man in the back shouted, and then there was a minor scuffle before he emerged from the back, dragging a suit-clad man, probably the manager. The grip on Robert's hair slackened a bit, but the man didn't let go of him. The partner from the back waved his knife. Apparently, they weren't both carrying. Dubiously fortuitous.

The manager fell onto the counter and clutched the edges of it to stay upright. His hairpiece was askew, and flopped over his eyes. "I said that we're an auxiliary branch! We only carry—"

"What about the safe deposit boxes, eh?"

Robert sensed that this was going to go downhill momentarily. The manager pushed his hairpiece out of his eyes and reddened. "As I said, we're an auxiliary branch, and as such we don't have—"

The man with the knife brought the butt of it down on the manager's skull, and the he crumpled onto the lino.

"Right then, ladies and gents! Wallets, purses, jewelry, watches, rings, all in the bag!" The man holding Robert shot the ceiling again, and Robert wondered where their fine boys in blue were. This had been going on too long. His eyes shot to Carolyn behind the counter, slipping her ring off and palming it.

The gunman saw it too. "Put it in the bag," he said, tossing the plastic ASDA bag at her. It hit her in the face.

"My husband gave this to me before he died," Carolyn pleaded. "It's inscribed—"

"I don't care if you got it from Herself, put it in the—"

"Oh let her keep it," Robert heard himself saying, and his voice of self-preservation threw up its hands and made the 'Time out' gesture. He ignored it. "What harm can it do?"

Knife man reached over the teller counter and grabbed at Carolyn's hand. "Let's go!"

Carolyn screeched and jerked back, and the gunman's arm came down over Robert's shoulder to take haphazard aim. Robert didn't really think about it, just grabbed the man by the wrist and yanked. He bent at the waist and the man flipped over Robert's back. There was a sickening crunch, and Robert could tell by the way the wrist gave that it was broken. He slipped the man's gun from his hand and kept a tight grip on the barrel.

The man crumpled on the floor, screaming, and everyone seemed to take it as a sign that they could scream too, screeching in confusion. Just when it started to die down (except for gunman, he was in definite pain), Robert heard the whine of police sirens. Finally.

Knife man took one look at his partner, then at Robert with the gun, and let go of Carolyn and bolted for the door. He crashed into someone on their way in, fell backwards, then scrambled to his feet and dashed to the left.

Robert ran down the street after him. He didn't even know why he was doing it. These were the kinds of actions that crazy suicidal people did, looking for passive death. Thank god he'd been doing cardio forever. The man ducked into an alley, bag trailing jewelry from a hole in the bottom. Well, that was something, wasn't it?

They only went three streets before the man dashed into a side street alley, ran for a series of storefronts, and then crashed into the chainlink fence. He whirled, back to the fence, glancing about for another means of egress. Maybe he could have scaled the fence. It wasn't that high. But he hadn't seemed to have thought of that.

"Just lie down," Robert heard himself saying, hands out in front of him, gun still clutched in his fingers, but not aimed at anything. The man's eyes darted from the gun hand to Robert's face, to somewhere behind him. It was obvious that he was calculating the odds. Robert waved the gun by the barrel. "Lie down, mate."

"I'm not your mate," the man grumbled, and then started to crouch, knife displayed as if he was going to drop it. Robert didn't know what the odds were in knife versus gun. They were probably shite, especially when the gun wielder was inexperienced and gripping the completely wrong part.

Robert started to lower his hands, when the man feinted and brought the knife up, lunging towards Robert's stomach. Robert had milliseconds to grasp the man by the shoulders, but he felt when the knife impacted his belly, when it tilted to the side and snapped with the force of the man shoving it. There was no searing pain, no sense of puncture. He brought his gun hand up and slammed the butt into the man's head, sending him spinning. He collapsed into a heap of rubbish bags.

The sirens went by them, on their way to the bank, no doubt. Robert stared at the man, wondering if he was unconscious or dead. A quick pulse-check assuaged his guilt, and he felt his own stomach, looking for blood and a puncture. He'd been told that sometimes you didn't feel it at first.

There was nothing. There was a jagged tear in his shirt where the knife had skidded across his skin, but no puncture, no tear, not even a scratch. The knife had snapped at the hilt, its blade lying over to the side where it had flown on impact.

He remembered the gun and looked at it in his hand, but instead of a straight metal barrel, it was bent, crushed in, indented, prints left on the metal as if it had been a tube of clay. Robert dropped it, listening to the heavy thud of it in a puddle.

Robert stared at his hands, and then down at the warped metal on the cement.

What the hell?

  


* * *

"Here you go," Gwen said as she deposited the two parts of the box they'd found on the table across the lab. Maggie shook the canister in her hand and peered at the glass sides. Dr Schmidt (Oh Danny boy, but only in her head) leant in to her, and Maggie wondered where he'd learnt about personal space, because it certainly hadn't been anywhere she'd ever been. She stepped to the left and set the canister on a shelf and watched the particles dance in it for a second. Sometimes these isotopes got a little antsy and made the canisters jump about, and she hadn't another vacuum-can in this size.

"What are you making?" Dr Schmidt asked her, his eyes riveted to the canister.

She could tell him, or she could lie. "Sharkleberry Fin Kool-Aid," she fibbed. Look, she'd just met the man the day before. This wasn't the first time she'd lied to someone who was supposed to be on their side. She wondered if she was paranoid.

Dr Schmidt blinked at her, and she wondered if he knew she was joking. Instead she turned to Gwen. "And that is what?"

Jack poked his head in, then followed with the rest of his body. He had a pittin on each shoulder. Maggie didn't mind the pittins being in the lab as long as they were held by someone trustworthy. Jack hadn't licked her pastry yesterday, so that was something.

Gwen picked one of the pieces back up. "We don't know; that's your job."

Maggie took it from her hand with a pair of tongs and turned it over, looking at the familiar display. "And you found it broken?"

Gwen shrugged. "Yes, but it was broken last night. Big flash. The tapes are interesting."

Oh, that wasn't reassuring. Maggie thought about the circular symbol on the back, where she'd seen it before.

"Oh hell no," she said quickly, picking up the other box half with another tongs and depressing the switch on the wall, a big red button, as big as she could get (Lois had written 'EASY' on it in white paint marker.). The lead lined door opened and Maggie tossed the box pieces and the tongs inside, slamming the door with her shoulder. She yanked a Geiger counter from the shelf by her desk and flipped it on. She waved the rod in the direction of the three people in the room, and it went off with a crackle hiss crackle of a Geiger counter happy to be doing its job.

"That thing, is a Twaft bomb," she said. "I have five of them already, none of them intact." She ran the stem of the reader down Gwen's front and it went bonkers around her thighs and hands. Daniel was a little lighter, and Jack was dosed a little heavier, probably because he'd manhandled the tech when they'd found it in a vain attempt to find out what it was. "These things keep coming through."

Jack scrunched his nose. "I thought those were myths," he said. "We used to call them twa—"

"Yes, ha ha, aren't you droll. How did you not do any safety readings on this before you picked it up?" Maggie said, rolling her eyes as Gwen bit her lower lip.

"It was supposed to be a medical thing, with the girl, and so we took Dr Schmidt—"

"Who else touched it?" Maggie asked as she got out the Demron bag and tossed it at Gwen.

"We got it from the site, so other than the two people who broke it, no one."

Jack lowered the pittins from his shoulders. "Don't you dare set those radioactive guinea pigs down," Maggie warned. "Everyone gets a scrub down."

"Awwww," Gwen and Jack said in unison, and Maggie pressed the sequence of buttons on her remote to open the side wall and reveal the radiation and drenching shower entrance. Dr Schmidt simply blinked and seemed to wait for orders. Good boy.

Maggie pointed with the monitor of the Geiger counter. "Go, chop chop. Everything in the bag. Bars of soap in the stall, and so help me god if I have to come in and scrub you all proper, I'll kill you."

Gwen sighed and shook the bag open. Maggie pressed the controls and heard the hiss of the water start. Dr Schmidt turned to her, his shirt already off before he hit the shower room. "In my office there are bisphosphonates in the B cabinet. I would be gratefully if you'd fetch them."

"Of course," she said, a little distracted by his stomach muscles. He was. Wow, he was, well, he was. Was he talking to her? "And what else huh?"

Dr Schmidt smiled, and for the first time she noticed that he had very straight teeth. Regimental. Wow shiny. Lois had mentioned that he might be a robot.

"Call me Daniel."

Maggie nodded and he turned away, unbuckling his belt. Jack handed Gwen the pittins and pulled off his shirt and threw it in the room after Daniel. "Sexy times in the radiation shower, eh, Gwen?"

Gwen handed him the pittins. "You get to hold these guys. And I get the lone stall. You shower with the doctor."

Jack smiled. "Two nubile men, two pittins…" he winked and then when Sam bit his hand, "Hey, what do you take me for? I'd never do that to you."

Maggie was sad that the shower wasn't in full view of the lab, though if she cared she could key on the monitors and—

"Hey," Jack said as he and Gwen ambled into the shower, taking off their clothes. "What happened to those sponges that we used to absorb—"

"Old Hub," Gwen said.

"Aw. Man, I am never forgiving Dee for blowing up all our cool shit."

Maggie ran the Geiger over her own hand absently as she watched them go.

 _Crackle-hiss-crackle-crackle._

Oh, _shit._ She tossed the counter on her desk and followed them in. She'd just bought this blouse yesterday.

"Hey, Mags! I knew you couldn't stay away!"

  


* * *

"Give her back her purse, and then apologise for trying to rob her," Robert said jovially, hands in pockets.

The bloke with the bad teeth and the pocket knife (really, a pocketknife?) waved his tiny blade. "Oi, get lost."

Robert shrugged and shook his head. "Return her purse, and then apologise for trying to rob her," he repeated. "Oh, yeah, uhm, or else."

The man seemed to waver for a second. Robert wondered what was going through his mind: _This fucker's insane,_ probably, or _What the fuck?_ most likely.

Robert smiled. "I know what you're thinking," he began, taking one step towards them. "I have to be insane, right? I mean, you could do serious damage with that little thing." He gestured with one hand. Still inside his coat pocket. "I mean, it _is_ a knife, after all."

The man looked down at his hand and seemed to remember that he was the armed one. "Hey yeah. Back the fuck up."

Robert took another step forward. "I haven't been at this long, just oh—" he looked at his watch. "An hour or so, but I'm pretty good at it, what with my super powers and all."

"Look, mister," the woman said, "just let him have it. It's not worth—"

Robert waved a hand. "Oh don't worry about me." He reached out with one hand and punched through the wall of a metal skip next to him. The metal caved like rice paper, and when he pulled his hand out it was unscathed. Didn't even hurt. "I'm covered."

The man with the knife backed up a step. "What the fuck are you on, mate?"

Robert waggled the fingers on his super!hand. "High on life. And I'm not your mate. Now return the purse, apologise, drop the knife and get the fuck out of here."

There was a long series of seconds in which everyone just stared at each other, and Robert wondered how long it actually was. Could time slow down like in a film? Or was it actually taking this long? Did endorphins make it seem longer? What did normal time feel like when you were on speed? He made a mental note to ask one of his old addict patients.

Oh wait.

Finally, the man dropped the knife, handed the bag back to the stunned lady, and took off. Robert pulled a tissue from his pocket and wiped his knuckles. They were greasy. Dumpster grease.

The woman clutched her purse to her chest and blinked. "Thank you?"

Robert turned back the way he had come. "No problem," he called over his shoulder.

On to the next one.

Fighting crime was actually hard, not because the fighting crime was difficult, but _finding_ crimes in progress was not as easy as the papers made it seem. Robert walked through the back alley and wished someone would try to jump him. That would have made his day. Alas, nothing but a few dogs and a rancid dumpster full of old lumpia from the Filipino restaurant.

He could murder a lumpia right now. Well, as soon as he did a few more things.

  


* * *

"Hello, my name is 'personal dosimeter'?" Gwen said as Maggie taped the sensor to her shirt.

"What can I say," Maggie mumbled through a mouthful of sticky labels, "I'm a funny gel."

Daniel was still in the shower area doing his hair or something, and Jack was in the doorway of both places, lingering. His gaze had a hard time settling between Gwen's braless t-shirt and whatever Daniel was sporting. Possibly nothing.

"Now, if any of these turns dark blue, or reads more than .5 grays, you need to come back here quick like a bunny." She slapped her own dosimeter on and tapped it absently. Jack took his and solemnly placed it over his heart. Oh precious.

"I'll take the doctor's in to him," he said, plucking the final badge from her fingers and smiling sweetly. Maggie was starting to suspect that the doctor was still in his y-fronts. She narrowed her eyes at Jack's retreating back. Bastard.

Maggie gave up being resentful when Lois entered the room with a tray of coffees and teas. "For our freshly irradiated troops," Lois said, handing her a steaming cup. Bless Lois. Bless her to heaven.

Gwen sipped a large mug of coffee and sighed. "If I never have to take another one of those showers again, I will be grateful every day of my life."

"We should be grateful that the Twaft bomb was a dud," Maggie told her. "If it had gone off, it would have levelled Rookwood and made the surrounding land uninhabitable for about a hundred and fifty years." Maggie looked at the images the lead screening room camera had taken of the bomb before encasing it. "It looks as if it snapped on the housing seam and didn't break open the incendiary casing."

Jack set his chin on her shoulder and she almost started. "Then we were very lucky." One hand snaked around her waist to point at the photo. "Look at the way the detonator is still intact."

Maggie blinked and forced herself to focus on the task at hand. The last time any man had touched her incidentally like this had been—well. PC Crispin hadn't counted, because he was young enough to be her little brother, and that was distressing. Jack's hair brushed her cheek and she felt a little crackle of something in her chest. Jesus, they weren't kidding about those pheromones of his.

"Yeah, well," she said, to break her own thinking, not that she had anything to add. "Uhm, it would be a good idea to track down Katy and the mystery man—"

"The guard told us—that's Dr Robert Costa," Gwen said, and then glanced at Daniel when he came out of the shower area, combing his hair.

"He was fired for incompetent," Daniel said, then frowned. "In. Competen-ce? Yesterday."

Jack stepped away from Maggie and she was free to reach for the Geiger counters. "Regardless, you should be able to track Dr Costa and Katy Callahan with these babies." She waved the counter then set it down and hooked it up with the tech she'd modified to make it more user-friendly. Earth user-friendly. The aliens to whom this tech once belonged could probably handle it just fine as is. They also probably had five thumbs.

Lois stared at the boxes wired to the Geiger counters and made a face. "Those look like GPS devices."

Maggie smiled. "They're Tom-Toms. I bought a crate of them wholesale." She tapped the screens when they blinked on. "We can use them to track the residual radioactive energy from the bomb, like a bloodhound."

Lois sighed. "Following Tom-Toms is my lot in life."

Maggie had heard the story of the cheese. In fact, she still had Blynken-hoarde's box in one of her drawers here, just in case they needed the translator again some day.

Gwen once told her that last Valentine's Day, Bertie had beamed a mass of bacterial phages to Lois's desk and they'd eaten a heart-shape on the surface before dissipating. He'd probably thought it was romantic.

"It would be prudent to find them," Daniel said, "since the radiation will make them quite ill."

"Okay then," Jack said, swiping one of the GPS machines from the counter, "I dunno about you, but I'm in the mood for a little hide and seek."

Gwen barked a laugh, then turned red and covered her mouth, but she didn't volunteer any explanation.

"Attention," Dee's voice said curtly over the loudspeaker. Gwen jumped and Maggie spilled her tea on her font. Fuck all. She was going to have to change. Again. "Police band reports a small blond vagrant girl in a hospital gown beating the stuffing out of a group of unsavouries in Victoria Park."

Jack glanced at the intercom and smiled. "I love it when they make a ruckus."

Maggie keyed Robert Costa's address into a Tom-Tom and handed it to Jack. "You go for this one. You're good with doctors."

Gwen choked on another laugh and slapped Maggie on the back lightly. Things were looking up.

  


* * *

Huw had just come out of the shop with three cans of paint and was about to head down Lansdowne Road when he heard the ruckus down the street. If he had been asked to describe the ruckus, he might have mentioned crashing and folksongs.

The last time he'd heard that song had been an old American run of _The Muppet Show_ , sung by a brown felt dog playing the piano. Now a glance down the street towards the park revealed the singer, a little blonde, small tiny thing, skinny, hospital frock, singing and picking up the red rubbish barrels and dancing with one before using it to dent the black SUV in the middle of the road.

Huw smiled to himself and set the paint cans on the ground. He leant against the retaining wall and lit a fag. A floorshow.

 _"Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,  
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly."_

The girl was flanked on either side by a woman with a ponytail and a tall blonde man. Huw took his mobile out and snapped a few pictures for the website. Hadn't seen this one before. The woman held her hands out in front of her, possibly to show she was unarmed, possibly because she was getting ready to tackle. Huw's uncles on the farm had made the same gesture right before they tried to wrestle pigs.

"What's all this, then?" Huw mumbled to an old man standing next to him.

"Dunno, some escaped nutter and her handlers," he said around a toothpick. "Doing a shit job, if you ask me. Got an extra?"

Huw had asked, so that was something. He flipped open the hard pack of Marlboros and held it out, then offered his lighter. "So, how long this been going on?"

The geezer took his first drag and smiled. "Not long. Before they got here, she was in the park beating the seven bells out of them blighters that sell drugs." He sniffed. "Mad fucking bint, that."

"Miss Callahan," said the man, raising a hand, "you are to be coming with us."

The mad girl set her rubbish bin/dance partner down and blinked. "Are you with the Top of the Pops?"

Huw snorted and the man paused, lowering his hands. "Nein, no, Top of the Pops," he said, every word punctuated with a question mark. The blonde ponytail crept closer behind Miss Callahan, and Huw took bets on how this was going to go. The girl had lifted a rubbish bin like it was nothing.

Miss Callahan must have sensed the bint behind her, because she turned and thrust out one palm. When it connected to he woman's chest, she flew back and landed on the grass. Huw shook his head. That would knock the fun out of someone.

 _"Ask me a riddle and I reply  
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie."_

The man, German sounding, actually, made for Miss Callahan, but fell short when she dashed off back into the park. He started to go after her, but the other woman groaned, sitting up. He knelt next to her and felt her head.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," she said, batting his hands away. Then she pressed her ear, or something in her ear. "Ma'am?"

Another woman rounded the corner and glanced about. She wasn't happy with what she found, if the stomping of her boots was any indication.

"How can you lose her?" The woman yelled at the two of them. "She's five-two and addled!"

Only the woman had the presence of mind to look sheepish. The man just shrugged.

The new woman, obviously the leader, threw up her hands. "Maggie, get in the SUV. Schmidt, cut through the park on foot. Dee," she paused here, tapping her earpiece. "How's Jack doing? Well, when he does see fit to call in, you tell him to report, or I'll bench him."

The man and woman that Huw had first seen, the blonde wonder twins, split up, one into the park, one into the vehicle. The leader ripped her headpiece off and shoved it in her pocket, yanking the door of the driver's side open. "How do you lose her? It's flat, for god's sake!" The SUV started grumpily and screeched around the corner.

"This is what our tax dollars pay for, eh?" the old man laughed, stubbing out his cigarette and retreating back into the cobblers behind them.

Huw shook his head and watched the flashing blue lights go. Ah, Torchwood, mucking shite up since ever.

  


* * *

Robert shoved his hands in his pockets and stood on the strut of the bridge, wishing he had a cape. Well, no, a cape would stand out, and they only worked on people who flew.

Robert couldn't fly. He'd tentatively tried it. But so far he hadn't been able to damage himself. He'd broken a brick on his hand. He'd crushed that gun earlier, and since then he'd been running through the paces. And speaking of running, that was quick, too. He'd gone from Grangetown to Cogan Spur in a minute.

He felt lighter, almost as if he was heady, light, spinny, but when he paused, he got none of the disorientation that came with the sensation. Sounds felt magnified, almost, as if he was in a place with a huge echo.

Behind him, the traffic slowed when it passed him, but he smiled and waved, then turned back to look out over the Ely River. He wondered if someone was going to call the police and tell them that there was a jumper on the bridge.

So far, no one had. But that didn't stop the man down at the end of the bridge from raising his hands to show he was unarmed, and jumping up on the concrete ledge, picking his way over to Robert despite the wind, as if he balanced on ledges all the time. His short coat was zipped against the cold, and his boots looked to have good traction. Robert took in his blue eyes and styled hair and thought about how Spencer had hair like that when they had first met.

"Robert Costa," the man called out as he approached. "Love your coffee."

Robert rolled his eyes. "I get that a lot."

The man shrugged. "Could have been worse. Could be Robert Starbucks." He waved a hand. "Jack Harkness."

Robert blinked at him. "I'm not going to jump," he said suddenly.

Jack turned away from him to face out, examining the river. "I know." He shoved his hands in his pockets and closed his eyes, lifting his jaw. Robert had to admit, it was a nice jaw. "You've been busy this afternoon," he said lightly.

"What?"

Jack shrugged. "Foiled a bank robbery, stopped three muggers, saved a little girl from walking into traffic, and, if I am right, clotheslined a man coming out of a newsagents with his hands full of Milka bars." He smiled. "Nice."

"Who are you?"

"An interested party," Jack said, glancing at him. "Quite interested."

Oh he was not serious. "Are you here to arrest me?"

"Why?" Jack asked, smiling. "Do you want me to?" He winked. "Do you think I could?"

This was not what he was expecting from a man who came out of nowhere and not only knew his name, but seemed to know what was going on with him.

The thing was, _he_ didn't know what was happening to him. It had to have been something from the time he couldn't remember. He'd wracked his brain in between scuffles, trying to trace his steps: packed up his shit, walked out to the car park, and then…and then waking up in his car.

"Do you know what's happening to me?" he asked, sidestepping over on the ledge to put some distance between him and Jack.

"Of course." Jack rocked on the balls of his feet. This ledge really didn't bother him. "Of course, then, I could be lying. I could say anything."

Robert snorted. "Right."

Jack smiled. He had a nice smile. And he was fit, and Jesus, Robert you are not thinking of pulling this man. Once he and Spence'd had a heated discussion about whether or not Superman's load would shoot through Lois Lane's head when he came, and this was not something Robert wanted to think about or participate in himself.

"The truth is, it was a machine." Jack cocked his head. "The thing that did this, it irradiated you. You and Katy Callahan on the lawn at hospital. Do you remember?"

As soon as he said her name, something clicked in Robert's head, so strong it should have been audible to everyone around him. The memories pinballed through his head, bypassed the flippers and nocked into place—Katy, the box, the flash—

"God Save the Queen," he mumbled.

"Amen to that," Jack returned, his voice reminding Robert that he was there. "But really, it's rather serious." Jack cocked his head and reached out one hand to touch Robert's shoulder. His hands were huge. "This will kill you," he said softly. "You have to come with me. I can help you."

"Radiation doesn't do this to a person," Robert said simply. "I should know. I'm a doctor."

Jack smiled. " _Were_ a doctor, right?" And then he seemed to think better of it. "Sorry, that was uncalled for. But yeah, you're right, Dr Costa."

Robert thought for a second that this moment was probably the last time he'd be addressed as such.

"Besides, it was an alien machine." Jack shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets again. "I know. Sounds bonkers."

"Really, who are you?"

Jack's grin widened. "If I told you, it wouldn't mean anything."

"Try me."

"Torchwood."

"Nope."

His ears heard a woman scream, and it took him a second to realise that it was coming from the distance. How had he heard that? He glanced at Jack, but the man showed no signs that he had heard anything amiss.

"I have to go," he said, turning, trying to pinpoint the direction from which the scream had come. It was getting more insistent, and for a second he thought he could make out her saying, 'Don't touch me!' Down and to the left. "Someone's in trouble."

"If you don't come with me, you're going to be in trouble," Jack told him.

The woman's screams tapered off, and he could hear her moans, and the crunch of something hard hitting flesh.

"If you could do this, wouldn't you?" Robert asked, watching the traffic slow whenever it got to them. Probably thought one of them was going to jump.

Jack grabbed one of his arms, pulling something from his pockets. "Fair enough. But when this turns light blue—" he slapped a thick sticker on Robert's shirt. "You have to seek help. Pick up any phone, dial 0 and say the word 'Torchwood'."

Robert nodded, because what else could he do? And then he jumped off the bridge and fell down, down the twenty-five metres to the bank of the viaduct, landing on his feet with a thundering noise and a bit of cracked ground. When he looked up, Jack was still standing on the ledge, waving at him.

  


* * *

Dee raised the visor and peered at the fuselage. Was it sealed now? They used to use smoke to test the seal on boats. Maybe she should dunk it in the sink and see if water came from anywhere.

She suspected that Maggie had asked her to weld the spyplane together because she didn't want to have to do any of this. Dee took off the shield and set the soldering pen down, sighing. She might have mentioned that she had liked to build model airplanes when she was a child. However, her model airplanes had never had to be flight-worthy, or airtight. Once again, a hobby was ruined by occupation.

She resolved to never become a baker.

"So hey," Lois said, sauntering into her office and sitting on the chair in front of her desk. She held something pink that jingled in her hands.

"Maggie has a sick sense of humour," Dee mumbled.

Lois glanced at the plane. "Oh come on, think of how fun that will be when we can fly it into UNIT."

Dee glanced up. "This is to spy on UNIT?" She wasn't very comfortable with that. Plus, really, a _spy plane_? What was this? James Bond? If they really wanted to know what UNIT was up to, they had any number of ways to hack into the databases over there.

Lois smiled. "It's to make UNIT think we're spying on them."

"Oh for fuck's sake, are Jack and Cooper still torturing UNIT?" She pushed the plane away and unplugged the soldering pen with her foot.

Lois spread her hands, and the pink thing jingled. "Everyone needs a hobby?" she suggested, eyebrows raised.

Dee sat back and stared at the plane. "Well, I suppose it gave me a few hours of Zen."

"Ah yes. I use Jesus. And vodka."

"And a double-jointed girlf—"

"Triple-jointed," Lois corrected. "And there's nothing Zen about that. Trust me." Then she had the good grace to blush. "I think Captain Harkness is immunising me."

Dee thought about Jack and all that he had done since arriving. That was one way of putting it. "Innuendoising?" she suggested.

Lois shot her with a finger gun. Her aim was terrible even in imaginary bullets. "Oh, what I came in for," she said, sitting up and tossing the thing she'd been holding on the table. "I got you this when we were at Wight, but I lost it for a while. It's a personalised case for your mobile."

Dee held up the hot pink case. "'They Didn't Have Your Name'."

"They didn't." Lois shrugged.

Dee set it to the side. She had nieces.

"Someone somewhere better have some good news for me," Cooper said over the comm, and Dee felt a tug of satisfaction that she sounded like a commander Dee had once had in the service. She reached out to turn up the volume on the speaker and Lois sat up in her chair, dusting herself off as if she was visible to the others. Her hand grasped the handset and she used the extension line to conference call Jack's mobile.

"I'm ringing Captain Harkness, ma'am," Lois said cheerfully. Dee envied her ability to make her voice seem like she had rainbows coming out of her arse all the time whilst her face looked so serious.

"I'm done with your spyplane, Mags," Dee said. "Don't say I never did anything for you."

There was a cough. "Oh yeah, uhm, that's great. _Daniel_ , are you ready for pick up?" Lois rolled her eyes, and Dee realised that Maggie was telling her to shut the hell up about the UNIT spyplane in front of the recent UNIT recruit. It was a sad day when Hopley was more on top of security than Dee was.

"I could not find her," Schmidt said, sounding only faintly out of breath. "I think I saw her run very very fastly."

"Aren't you a military man?" Jack joked as he came on the line.

"Very very fastly," Daniel repeated. Dee wondered hie 'fastly' Miss Callahan, with her enhanced skills, had been going. Was she just a blur? Could they harness it for good? Dee would love to be able to move 'very very fastly' sometimes.

"It's true," Jack said, "I clocked the good doctor at sixty KPH. It's a good thing he decided to take a breather on Cogan Spur, or I would never have caught up with him."

Lois stole Dee's mug and took a sip. "This is cold," she mouthed, before fitting her earpiece in and leaving the room.

"So do you have him?" Cooper snapped, and Dee knew she already knew the answer. If Jack had managed to get Costa to come with him, he would have opened with that. She dusted off her desk and waited for her soldering pen to be cool enough to put away.

"Funny thing about that—"

"For Christ's sake, Jack—"

"Look, how do you arrest a man with superpowers who's running about town fighting crime?" Jack snorted. "I'm good, but I ain't that good, sister." His mike was spotty, as if he was standing somewhere windy.

"We also lost sight of our target," Daniel said suddenly. Dee sat back and put her hands behind her head. She was warming to Dr Bluntness. She wondered if he ran. She could use a partner other than Jack 'Look! I'm jogging! Let's do military songs!' Harkness.

There was a long pause, as if no one in Cooper's team wanted to talk about how they lost the tiny slip of a girl when there were three of them. Jack's loss was looking more and more forgivable as the seconds of speechlessness ticked on. And Cooper had been there, too. Maggie was useless sometimes, and Daniel was new, but Cooper was--

"You know," Lois commented into the silence, "I saw this in a movie once. We get them together in the same place, and they'll fight each other."

Jack laughed. "We could sell tickets. Get Debbie Gibson to make an appearance."

No one said anything. Dee wondered what colour the sky was in Jack's world.

"Did the doctor look ill?" Maggie asked. "I thought she looked quite ill, you know, when she wasn't tossing about eight-stone bins like they were made of styro."

Dee frowned. "One exposure to a radioactive substance shouldn't be that damaging, should it?" It was frightening how little she knew about radioactive things, and this was far from the first time she'd been exposed to them in her line of work. "I mean, X-ray machines are radiation, right? And those scanners at the airport."

"What I gather about the Twaft Bomb is that the radioactive element is dispersed in balls," Maggie answered. "Little solid things that can, and will, get under the skin. The initial explosion decimated the area, but the radioactive cloud is sticky. The balls get under your skin, like touching fiberglass insulation."

"I am go glad you made us shower now," Jack said, and Dee shook her head.

"Yeah, well, the thing is, Katy and Robert have those things under their skin, and they're getting sicker and sicker." Maggie coughed and apologised under her breath. "And people who stay near them will get sick, too."

There was a pause. Then, "Dr Schmidt, what is the treatment for acute radiation sickness?" Cooper asked.

"Treat the symptoms and make them comfortable," Daniel replied. Dee glanced at Lois, who frowned and picked at a nail.

"And that works?"

"Oh no. She is going to die, very soon, yes," Daniel said.

"What about Robert?" Jack asked.

"Oh yes, horribly."

Lois rolled her eyes and Dee shook her head. Sensitivity of a walrus, that one.

  


* * *

It was the best lo mein in the universe, Grace had decided. She always ordered it. Pork lo mein, and it came with an egg roll, and Spence always gave her his, too.

But Spence wasn't really eating much. Nothing, really. Pushing things about. Looking over her shoulder. That was okay. He was probably worried that Robert was going to show up and make a fuss. He was good at that. The day Spence had left, Robert had followed him to his new flat and banged on the door, screaming about some stupid vinyl albums.

He looked different. His hair was sleeker, like he'd used a different product, and his fingers were shiny. Grace didn't go for manicures herself, but she knew the end result when she saw it. His coat was hooked over the extra chair, and he fidgeted, turning his wineglass on the table by the stem.

"So like I said," Grace continued, "now that he's lost his job, I don't think it'd be a good idea for me to stay with him." She shrugged. "After all, he'll probably have to sell the house. I think he might even go move in with Gran."

Spence looked up from his plate. "The farm?" He shook his head. "Robbie hates the farm."

Grace shrugged again. "He's been sacked. No one's going to hire a shite doctor—"

"Oi, don't talk about your tad like that," Spence said sharply, pulling out his mobile and glancing at the dark screen. "Everyone has bad days."

She didn't give him the spiel about how doctors couldn't have bad days like that, because people died. And Robert wasn't a shite doctor, not even after Spence had left. Hell, once he'd stitched up Vandy's leg after some munter'd put a butter knife in his thigh, and he hadn't even said a word to the police about it or nothing. Still, something was wrong with him. He was short with her. Most of the time he didn't even see her, didn't know she was there.

On the other hand, unless he became a doctor for the Welsh Mafia, he was unemployable. And that was a point for Grace's cause.

"Yeah, I know," she mumbled, finishing the beer he'd bought for her. Spence did things like that--bought her a beer at the table before she even asked. He'd taken her to the clinic for birth control last year without one lecture, and once he'd given her money for spliffs, knowing full well what she was spending it on. "I mean, last month you said that maybe I could move in with you and—"

"Look, Gracika," Spence said, setting his napkin down. "The fact is that you're not mine. Legally, that is." He checked his mobile again and smiled. "Ioan and I are thinking of having a baby," he told her, and showed her a picture of a little kid on the screen. "This is the birth mother's other child."

"Uh huh," she mumbled. Her lo mein was starting to congeal, and looking at it made her want to sick up all over Spence's picked at duck.

Spence closed the phone and set it next to him, within eyesight. "You'd like a little brother, or sister, yeah?" He looked past her at the waiter and waggled his empty wineglass in the air. "You could make some money minding, if you want."

Grace pushed her plate away. "I thought you said I wasn't your daughter."

Spence paused whilst the waiter refilled his glass and then stared at her over the rim. "You'll always be my daughter, in a way, Gracik—"

"Don't call me that," she said suddenly, finishing her beer and slamming it on the table. It caught the lip of her plate, jolting the mess all over the tablecloth and Spence's phone.

"Grace," Spence said, rescuing his phone. "Don't do this."

"Do what?"

Spence made a face. "Be like him," he said quietly, tucking his phone away and covering his plate with his napkin. He pulled out his wallet and opened the billfold.

"Like him," Grace mumbled. Her heart felt heavy and thudding, her throat tight like she'd been screaming. "Like Robert, left behind."

Spence set a fifty quid on the table, and stood. "Moved on," he corrected. "Things don't last forever, Gracika." He folded another hundred quid into her hand and closed it. "You know that I'm here if you ever need anything," he lied, smiling. "Go get yourself something nice. Email me, yeah?"

Grace watched him walk out of the restaurant. He didn't look back, not even once.

Her hand hurt, and when she looked down at it, she'd cut her palm with her nails, and her blood spotted his greasy bills.

  


* * *

Gwen just wanted to decree a work-wide kiptime.

This had not been a banner day for Team Torchwood—radiation shower, useless goose chases, being strong-armed by a girl who barely weighed eight stone. Then there was the fact that _someone_ had eaten the banana-nut muffin she'd been saving. Gwen had come in this morning, opened the fridge, expected to see it on the plate in the cellophane, and Oh, hello, I'm not here.

She knew who the banana-nut bandit was. Jack Harkness and his muffin-rustling ways were in big trouble. When she had the time.

No time right now, as she and Dee and Jack sped back to Llandaff, this time towards the BBC Broadcasting House, where someone had broken in past security and was now 'aimlessly yet dangerously' wandering the studios, a description that meant property damage was occurring in a haphazard way, not unlike letting an elephant wander in a Swarovski shop.

Dee was driving, and Lois and Daniel were on the line. Gwen had opted to leave them just in case the Dr Costa called in. At this point, both he and Katy had to be quite ill, or at least, feeling the effects of the sickness. She checked her own personal dosimeter and glanced at Dee and Jack to make sure theirs were openly displayed. Dee's was mounted on her shoulder. Now that was a prepared person. Jack's was probably three layers under.

"I want this over as quickly as possible," Gwen said for the second time. "They said she's up in the fifth floor, where they film some daytime show or something." She paused. "I just realised that I haven't watched the telly since New Year's."

"You haven't missed much," Jack said, peeling his dosimeter from his shirt and plastering it on his topcoat.

"Explain to me where Mags is again?" Dee asked, eyes not leaving the road.

"HazMat's coming for cleanup," Lois answered for Gwen. "Mags is our contact with that guy, what's his name? The one with the funny limp?"

"Mister Allanken," Gwen supplied and checked her firearm before slipping it into the holster and covering it with her coat. She really didn't want to have to shoot Katy, but it was looking more and more as if they might have to, for her own good. The brachial nerve, or a knee might take her down, enough that they could slap the lead on her and move her.

Lead. Or whatever was in those alien radiation bags they'd discovered last year. Sometimes Gwen didn't look a gift rift in the mouth. Or was that a rift gift?

"He has a club foot," she continued, absently. She was watching as Dee turned into the carpark, deserted but for a few high-powered execs who lingered in the hopes that Gwen would give them the okay to return to work.

"Who has a club foot in a first-world country these days?" Dee asked.

"Byron had a club foot," Jack offered.

"Did you not hear the 'these days' part?"

Gwen sat back and appraised the front of the building, ignoring the chatter. They did this. The building plans showed that there were tonnes of exits everywhere in the building, unlocked exits. Katy could leave through any of them, and they wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Ianto's old adage about the four hundred kilo gorilla flashed into her mind.

"Wherever she wants," she mumbled, and the banter stopped.

"Boss?" Lois asked. Dee parked, cut the ignition, and let her hand rest on the keys. Jack sat forward in his seat so that his face poked between the two front seats.

"Are we there yet?"

Gwen brought her hand up for silence while she gave the strategy thought, and her fist connected with Jack's nose, and then there was squawking and grunting and apologies. She made them leave the car and cut the comm whilst she thought about it.

Wait a second, Dee was ex military and Jack was ex…everything. Wasn't this what delegating authority was for?

"You lot," she said, opening the door and motioning to them. "You have all that education in tactics and like." She handed them the PDA. "Tac…ticise."

Dee had the grace to nod her head and ignore Jack's smile as they studied the building plans, heads bent and so close they were almost touching, not out of some sort of bonding, but because the screen was tiny, and there was a glare in the carpark lamps.

"I'm thinking the Klannhein approach," Dee said, glancing at Jack. "Yeah?"

Jack shrugged. "If you want to play it that way."

"All right then. I'll go the long way. You go up the stairs. She's on the fifth floor, so we'll cover the main stairwells. The elevators are already locked. We have a seventy-five percent chance of intercepting her if she rabbits."

Gwen nodded. "Sounds good."

Dee handed her the PDA and jogged for the side entrance on the left. The right entrance was locked from the outside. That left Gwen and Jack going right down the middle.

"So," Gwen said as they jogged up the stairs, "What's the Klannhein approach?"

"Beats me," Jack replied. "All that military bullshit."

"You were in the military, right?" Gwen asked, glancing at him as she went round a turn.

Jack unholstered his gun. "I was in many militaries. The thing is, they name all these things, and then they end up telling you what to do, so what's the point of remembering what a Crazy Ivan is?"

"What's a Crazy Ivan?"

"Not a clue."

They cut the chatter the closer they got to the fifth floor, and by the time they were making their way down the hall, guns out, Jack was in the lead, and they were back to comm clicks. Jack rounded the corner, then nodded to Gwen. All clear. Dee was probably in place on the other side of the studio by now. Two beeps over the comm signaled that she was. Why didn't she take Dee everywhere?

They opened the studio door and crept past the soundbooth to the studio audience chairs. Dee was already on the opposite side, gun out and pointed at the stage. Yeah, Gwen remembered, that was why she didn't take Dee everywhere.

Katy Callahan was not looking well. She sat on the plush red sofa next to the interviewer desk, as if she was ready to confess all to Wossy. On the other hand, even discounting the scrotty hospital gown, she was pale and waxy, red around the eyes, hair sort of…brittle. Her eyes were sunken in, and even from here, Gwen could tell she was having trouble seeing them, precisely. She squinted and hunched and raised her hand to shield her gaze from the lights, but even then, it wasn't glare that was bothering her.

"Oh, I thought there would be more of you," she said, standing.

"Katy," Jack said, raising a hand out flat. Gwen hung back to cover the door. "Katy, you're sick."

Katy brushed off her gown and looked up at Gwen. "I'm sorry I'm late," she told her. "I got lost."

"Lost," Gwen echoed.

"The audition is still on, isn't it? I mean, I didn't miss it?" Katy put one hand on the edge of the desk; her breathing was laboured.

"Daniel," Dee said softly into her comm. She was in the camera area, her ear cupped over her bluetooth, gun put up. "She looks quite ill."

Daniel said something unintelligible, and then restated. "I'm on my way. Stay away from her."

Gwen glanced at Katy, in discussion with Jack.

"Darlin', what was the audition for?"

Katy sighed. " _The Good Old Days_ ," she mumbled.

"That went off the air when I was seven," Dee said softly into the comm.

Gwen glanced at the booth, its little gadgets and dials, switches and levers. Surely it wouldn't hurt to keep her distracted until Daniel arrived to take her in hand. If they tried to wrestle her into one of those bags now, it might kill her, or at the very least, they'd all be exposed, too.

"They told me that I was perfect," Katy said, her voice pleading. "You'll see. I can be a regular."

Jack raised his weapon again when she started forward, but she didn't leave the stage or look to be leaving it.

Gwen checked the time. It would take Daniel fifteen minutes to get here if he sped and used the carriageway shoulders. They had to keep her here, and if she didn't think this was an audition, then--

"You heard the lady," she told the two of them, and Jack lowered his gun. She settled into the recording booth with the door open, just in case, and looked out the Plexiglas wall at Katy. "You're on in thirty seconds. Dee, camera," Gwen said into the microphone, and it boomed through the speakers in the studio. "Let's make this girl a star."

Jack holstered his gun and looked down at his shirt. "Gwen, my sticker is bluing."

She thought about it. "How blue?"

"Oh, I dunno, periwinkle? Robin's egg? I don't know." His face wasn't visible from here, but she could see his shoulders tensing. Well, at least the employees were gone from the room, and Dee was farther back than he was.

"Miss Callahan," Gwen said. "When you're ready."

Katy smiled, fussed with her impossibly tangled stringy hair, then clasped her hands in front of her, and placed her feet in a loose V on the stage.

Then she opened her mouth and began to sing.

  


* * *

Robert was feeling a little rumbly in the stomach when he put his key in the lock and realised that he hadn't eaten since he'd scarfed some toast down this morning before leaving for the bank. That seemed like ages ago. It was strange how certain events could conspire to mess with time, moving too slow and then too quickly. Robert had once read a study about dogs and their perception of time, and how they had none in certain cases. Every time you were away from your dog, it felt like forever.

He wondered if he was the dog, waiting for Spence to come crawling back. Fuck that, he was going out tonight. He was going to have something to eat, he decided when he tossed his coat into the closet instead of hanging it up. He was going to…he was going to have a little lie down first.

There was a clink of glass and ice behind him, and he turned to look into the dark kitchen. He hadn't expected anyone to be home, since Grace had pretty much told him that she was going to go live with Spence. He had wanted to tell her fat chance, good luck, but he figured Spence'd either take her in, or let her stay overnight and then break the news to her over eggy toast in the morning, like he had when he'd told Robert he wanted a divorce.

There was a shadow in the corner seat of the table, farthest from everything but closest to the liquor in the sideboard. "Grace?"

"And there you are," Grace drawled. There, the glint of a cut glass tumbler gesturing over the tablecloth. "You, the bloke who's stuck with me." She set her glass down and leant forward. "And I'm fucking stuck with you."

Robert approached the table, but Grace didn't move, just blinked sleepy eyes in the weak shaft of light, one hand clutching the glass, the other scratching her neck before reaching down to fumble with the chicken tea cosy still on the table.

"Are you high?"

"Dad said that I have to stay with you," Grace said, ignoring him. "Said you adopted me."

"Gracie, what did you take?" Robert hauled her up by one arm, the other hand reaching for his mobile. She was limp and unsteady as he wrapped her arm over his shoulder, pulling and pressing 9-9-9 on the dial with his other.

Grace staggered a little and then swatted at him with her free arm. "Vandy's candies."

"What did you take?" Robert asked, again, shaking her as he dragged her out of the kitchen.

Grace sighed. "Dad's having a baby."

"Nine-nine-nine, please state your emergency."

"I'm at 577 Maple Terrace, Roath," he blurted out, dragging Gracie across the lounge. She made a little whining sound under her breath and stumbled a bit. "My daughter's overdosed on something and is sluggish and barely communicative."

"What did she take?"

"She's not coherent. Barbituates and alcohol, I think."

"Is she breathing?"

Robert and Grace did the slowest trip to the lounge in the universe. "Yes, but she can't support herself. Her pulse is erratic."

"I'm dispatching a unit," the operator told him. "Remain on the line, please."

Gracie collapsed like a ragdoll, and he caught her, clutching the mobile so hard that he crushed it in his hand.

"Grace," he said, laying her on the floor. "Grace, are you awake?" He tossed the mobile pieces to the side and set her on the floor, propping her feet on the settee. "Sweetheart, if you're awake, talk to me."

"I like lo mein," Grace mumbled, then rolled her head to the side and vomited. Lo mein. Robert turned her on her side and helped her empty her mouth of vomit, food and a few whole capsules that had just started to disintegrate. A few chunks of others.

"Oh baby," Robert murmured, sweeping her mouth with his fingers and slinging the detritus on the floor. Grace took a long shuddering sigh and opened her eyes.

"You're painted blue, too," she said softly, then closed her eyes and rolled her head away from him.

It took Robert a few seconds to realise that she'd meant the sticker Jack Harkness had slapped on him earlier in the day. That seemed like ages ago, too.

The dosimeter on his shirt was blue. Very blue. His eye twitched, and he felt like vomiting. He ripped off the sticker and tried to read the color scale on the side. How many Grays were too much? One? Half of one? God, it had been too long since his last training in radioactive contamination.

Jack had said that he was dosed with something, and that he was going to get worse. And if his radioactivity was increasing, like the sticker said, then he had—

He scooted to the other side of the room and stared at Grace. Was she breathing? What if he had to breathe for her? Did this thing cross contaminate? Had he contaminated every person he'd touched? That was how it worked, wasn't it? Why couldn't he remember any of this? They'd drilled and drilled and drilled on this in school.

If he sat quite still, he could see the shallow rise and fall of Grace's chest, but staring at it became harder and harder the more his vision blurred. His mind raced and he tried to remember what Jack had told him to do. Ring zero? Ring—

His mobile was in pieces on the floor. So much for that. He was going to die here, and by the time the paramedics got here, Grace will have been exposed to him for too long and—

Grace's bag sat on the floor by her shoes, and he snatched at it. The little pom-pom bag was stuffed with scraps of poetry-filled paper. He dumped everything out, filtered through the scraps to find a lighter, a pack of Superkings, a half-eaten Aero, and her mobile, tiny and purple, little bell charms hanging from the corner. Jesus, she was so fucking young.

Robert didn't waste time thinking about it. He unlocked the keypad, dialed 0, and when the line clicked, scrambled back from Grace as far as he could get. "Torchwood," he whispered. "Torchwood, Torchwood, Torchwood."

  


* * *

Jack's mobile vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out. He rarely used the mobile, just the bluetooth, but the bluetooth didn't get text messages.

 _Detour. We have the doctor. L._

It took him a second to realise that they meant Robert Costa, and not the Doctor-Doctor.

 _"When youth was at the springtime,  
And laughter ev'rywhere,  
Long trails afar I wander'd,  
With heart that knew not care;"_

This had been going on for about an hour, and Gwen still sat in the control booth, her face earnest. Katy stood under the lights of the studio, sweating and still singing. Jack glanced at Dee behind the camera, peering through the dark lens intently as if she was recording. Were they recording? Gwen sat in the sound booth and pressed one headphone to her eye, eyes fixed to Katy's form.

 _"But now whene'er the Trade Winds  
Come singing o'er the sea,  
I hear the road to Kerry,  
The little road to Kerry,  
The winding road to Kerry.  
Calling me."_

She didn't look well at all, actually. Jack's dosimeter was not looking good, and he wasn't feeling well at all, either. He'd tucked it into his pocket. The whole thing reminded him too much of a previous time in radiation land, a time he'd been told the worst news of his life. The doctor had the worst tact ever.

Jack waved Dee in a pullback gesture, and she panned, circling Katy but moving further away. Katy swayed and caught herself, paused, and Jack wondered if she was finished, but the twitching of he fingers down at her side looked like piano playing, and he realised she was playing the bridge to the song in her head.

 _"The sea no longer holds me,  
My heart is far—"_

Katy staggered and leant against the chair on the end of the set, then sat on the arm. She wiped her forehead and paused, then blinked and took a deep breath. Jack looked at his personal dosimeter, and it was ticking up, colour-wise. He took over the camera and thumbed Dee towards the door, tapping his dosimeter.

His tummy was feeling poorly.

 _So when the…stars of heaven  
Shine clear….cross the foam,  
I hear—"_

Katy fell backwards on the arm of the chair, arm flopping down towards the floor. Jack reached out to feel for a pulse, but something wet trickled down his lip, and when he wiped his hand, it came away bloody.

 _Oh,_ he thought before he collapsed to the floor.

  


* * *

The birds sat on the ledge outside his window. Every once in a while one of them would leave, and another would settle down immediately to take its place. They must have had a rota. Could birds have rotas? Time-share ledges.

Robert coughed again, and brought up some more crud. They'd sluiced his airways with some sort of mucus sludge that had, according to the blonde doctor, Dr. Schmidt (he looked familiar), coated the radioactive particulates like a mini lead casing, and then facilitated the exit from the body. Robert would have been more upset about the gastrointestinal effects if he hadn't understood what a miracle it was for him to be alive.

Speaking of miracles--"So she's okay?"

"Charcoal and naloxone," the woman, Gwen—call me Gwen—Cooper said as she ate one of his grapes. Robert never had liked grapes; he didn't have a fever. He really wanted a Lilt, was what he wanted, with a strong bolt of rum in it. "She's fifteen. She'll recover. Physically."

"It would have been too late by the time the paramedics had got there," Robert said, watching her give him the big innocent eyes. "You're Torchwood, right? Like Jack Harkness?"

Gwen's eyes crinkled with her smile. "I think it's fair to say that no one is like Jack," she told him breezily, and before he could wonder if she was avoiding answering, she finished with, "But yes." She ate another grape. "So, I hear you're a doctor in need of gainful employment."

Robert thought about Grace up there in Whitchurch. It wasn't just about him, anymore, actually. It never was, really. "I don't see how anything that's happened could possibly recommend me," he mumbled

There was a pause, the sound of a grape bursting in a mouth. Someone called for a Dr Merkleson to Radiology. "The people who work for me tend to fall into my lap," Gwen said finally, sitting back in the chair next to his bed and smoothing her hand down the sheet. "Rather like this."

"I won't be licensed for very long," he said, not bothering to think too hard about what she was saying. "And there's going to be a litigation."

"Hrm. Well that is a problem, but no." Gwen slapped her thigh and stood up. "No, I have a doctor," Gwen told him, glancing at his face before looking at the trees just outside his window. "An official one. What I need is a special doctor, and I don't give fuck-all about official."

"I can't practice without a—"

"Of course you can." She wiped at something on the window glass. Out in the hallways a trolley passed by laden with food trays. "And you should."

Robert sighed. "It's not legal—"

Gwen turned suddenly, hands behind her back. "I think you know as well as I do that legality only goes so far. I want you, and I have permission from on high to hire you."

Robert sighed and sat back in the pillows. No one was that high. "You can't go to the director of medicine. You don't have the authority…" he dwindled off when Gwen hitched her thumb up and raised her eyebrows, biting her lips. "Higher up? Who's higher, the Board of British Medi…?" The thumb pitched higher. "Higher. I'm not even in the right area, am I?"

Gwen winked and reached into the bag slung over her shoulder. She pulled out a buff file, two centimetres thick, and set it on the bed table. "Look at this file, and tell me what you think," Gwen said, then slid the folder across the tray. "I'll be back later."

Robert flipped open the folder as she stood, and glanced at the photo on the top. "That's a medical impossibility."

Gwen smiled and turned towards the exit. "You think?"

He blinked and tried to decipher what he was looking at in human terms. "Is this an autopsy?"

Gwen paused at the door, one hand on the jamb. Robert stared at her face, a mask of mystery. Her eyes were wide and round and held something strange, some sort of message to him about the folder, about what had happened in the past few days, some enigma that she wanted to tell him, but whose divulgence he had yet to earn.

"That person is still alive and requires our help, Mister Costa." She reached in her pocket and pulled out a few notes. "I'm going to go get a cup of coffee. While I'm gone, I want you to make up a treatment regimen based on what you see."

He flipped a few pages and blinked at the notations. Someone was trying a few treatments, but they were all based on trial and error. Medications were prescribed and discarded routinely.

He didn't notice when she left, and by the time she returned, he'd already filled a page with notes.

  


* * *

"That's the last of Katy Callahan," Lois said, amending a few hospital reports and saving before exiting out of the buttonhole in the hospital database. She liked to have these little ins for all the local systems. Maggie called them backdoors, but Lois liked 'buttonhole' because it made her think of something small and useful, instead of something sneaky and underhanded and used to carry on illicit affairs.

Like her predecessor, Lois had found that the cover stories were best directed from her desk, so that she knew all the things involved. Maggie was horrible at thinking of clever excuses (Sharkleberry Fin, her arse), and Gwen was a delegator. Dee thought waving the 'Torchwood' badge was enough and people should shut the hell up. But occasionally, people needed to be told that there had been a gas leak, and that explained why everyone within a kilometre radius vomited mucus that then sprouted legs and ran away over to the Queens Arcade.

Or some such.

And no one bought the swamp gas reflected off Venus thing.

Daniel handed her a buff folder. "I emailed you the reports, but I also made hard copies, as you requested."

Lois took the folder dubiously. "I just barely closed it. Are you sure you don't need more time?"

The man shrugged. "It was a fastly autopsy. I couldn't do anything more than scan her in the bag." He gestured. "Contamination."

Lois didn't bother to mention that Gretchen would have taken a week to do the paperwork. If this was Daniel's way, she wasn't looking a gift horse in the mouth. Gift German? Gift robot? He would either just continue to make her life easier, or he would get hip to the square, and notice that everyone one else was a slacker.

At least he didn't blare The Streets.

"Well, that's excellent, Dr Schmidt." Lois set the folder in her 'process' file. If she could harass Captain Harkness into finishing his statement, she could actually have this case wrapped up by tomorrow.

Daniel stood next to her desk, hands clasped in front of him, like the world's most uncomfortable doctor. Or possibly one of those Swiss guards that watched the pope or something. "I am Daniel," he told her.

It was about fucking time.

Lois nodded. "Daniel."

She thought they were done, but he reached across to the folder and flipped it open, exposing his first page, and the smiling black and white photograph of Katy Callahan, circa nineteen seventy-six. "What happened the first time?" he asked.

Lois turned the photo and stared at the girl's winning smile. She had really been, as Jack said, a looker. "She was on her way to an audition, the big one that was supposed to make her, probably would have made her," Lois said, fingering the disc. "The Rift took her, and she disappeared for twenty-five years. Came back the same exact age she was, but...well."

"Like a simpleton," Daniel finished for her. "Parts of her brain showed deep scarring, I get from her medical charts."

Lois clicked a few times on her mouse, and then turned her speakers up a little bit.

" _'Tis the last rose of summer  
Left blooming alone;  
All her lovely companions  
Are faded and gone_"

"She really did have a lovely voice," Lois said.

"I like the heavy metal," Daniel told her. "But I suppose it is passable."

Lois snorted. German robot heavy metal doctor. It was too good to be true. She had fodder for days. And the time to do things too, now that her robot doctor had exceeded expectations.

Daniel waved his hand once, shrugged his bag over his shoulder, and made for the doors. That left…no one home. Gwen was out recruiting, Maggie was over at HazMat, Dee was gone for the day and Jack was incommunicado, probably something to do with Flat Holm. Maybe he was retconning the entire Callahan family.

" _Thus kindly I scatter,  
Thy leaves o'er the bed,  
Where thy mates of the garden  
Lie scentless and dead._"

It was a shame that no one would ever get to hear the recording from the night Katy died. She was on fire, really, probably the best performance of her life, at least of her recording life.

Lois opened a window and unbuttoned something.

  


* * *

"We interrupt Radio 4 broadcasting to bring you a recording that has surfaced in our offices. We aren't quite sure how this came into our hands, but it appeared in our files this morning, and all but pleaded to be played. The singer is unidentified, but the vocal range and timbre remind us of recordings made by the late Katy Callahan shortly before her disappearance thirty years ago. Miss Callahan, some of you might remember, was the heiress to the Callahan pharmacy business, though shortly before she dropped out of the public eye she had signed a contract with EMI and released a few folk songs on vinyl 45."

 _Tell me the tales that to me were so dear,  
Long, long ago, long, long ago,  
Sing me the songs I delighted to hear,  
Long, long ago, long ago._

 _Now you are come all my grief is removed,  
Let me forget that so far you have roved,  
Let be believe that you love as you loved,  
Long, long ago, long ago._

Robert turned off the radio and sat back in the car seat, staring out at the sea. The waters were rough and gray, bashing up against the craggy shore. He felt sympathy for anyone out there on a boat.

Oh, wait, that was going to be him.

Robert reached for his briefcase, stuffed with paperwork on his new charges, and checked the tape on the plastic bag he'd put it in. They were going on a boat. Where there was a boat, there was water.

He figured he'd get used to the whole 'sailing to work' idea.

Jack Harkness met him at the dock, long woolen coat wrapped about him. He pulled one hand from his pocket and waved, and Robert found himself returning the gesture. Thirty seconds later they were standing in front of the small boat that would take them out to Flat Holm.

"How's your daughter?" Jack asked as soon as they were ensconced in the small pilothouse and out of the wind. The boat pulled from the dock and started the rocky trip across the bay.

Robert pulled one glove off and dug about in his bag for a tube of lip balm. "She's doing better. Home from hospital next week." Grace had been doing better. They'd had a few therapeutic sessions with Spence, and she had regular individual and group sessions that seemed to be helping. The flexible hours Gwen Cooper had promised him would go a long way in patching up his life and making a stable home for Grace.

Spence was gone, and he was never coming back, but they had each other, and Robert was going to make sure that was the best possible thing. It didn't hurt that he had gainful employment, either.

Jack watched him apply the lip balm with a little too much interest. When the boat rocked a bit jerkily, he reached out one hand to steady Robert about the waist. "Whoa, this weather, eh?"

"You said no one knows about this place?"

Jack's hand slid from his waist and buried itself in the wool coat again. "Nope."

"And you don't have a doctor on staff."

"Double nope. Well, not officially. But you're gonna find that Helen is so efficient she deserves an honorary medical degree."

"And these people…they fall through a…a what?"

Jack ducked his head and smiled, but didn't look at him. "A Rift in time and space that runs through Cardiff."

"Sounds dire."

Jack did look at him then. "It can be. You'll see."

Robert rocked with the movement of the boat and watched the island come into view, small, rocky, the top of a building barely breaking the horizon. He had volumes of ideas about the people waiting for him there. People who needed him.

And he was their doctor.

END

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Katy's songs: 'Cottleston Pie' (Milne/Haynie), 'The Little road to Kerry' (Charles Wakefield Cadman), 'The Last Rose of Summer' (Moore/Stevenson), 'Long Long Ago' (Thomas Haynes Bayly)


End file.
